The book of Jack London

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 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 sentiment. And how we
laughed in memory of our mawkishness, once the attack of
dengue, or "boo-hoo" fever, which it proved to be, was a
thing of the past.

As soon as we were slightly better, we took a drawing-
room for New York, stopping over at Jacksonville for an
afternoon in which to totter around the Ostrich Farm.

104 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

The foregoing is by way of preparing the reader for re
ceiving into New York City a white, hollow-eyed, very
miserable Jack London, burdened with an almost insupport
able number of engagements to fulfil in half the days he
had originally alloted them. The first was a socialist meet
ing in Grand Central Palace, his lecture advertised for
eight p. m., and our belated train gave him scant leeway.
In no wise aided by the fact that I had to go to bed, too
blind with pain in head and muscles to lend cheer by word
or smile, Jack, ill, travel-worn, dinnerless, got into his black
suit and somehow carried off the occasion. His audience,
a mixed one, totaled nearly four thousand.

More than once Jack had forewarned me, in similar
strain to his remarks in the Johns Letters, of the baleful
influence exercised upon him by this mighty man-trap, New
York City. Even so, that early, I was inclined to discount
the mental factor, laying his condition mainly at the door
of fever and social over-strain. But I was forced to change
my mind. His own diagnosis was that his experience with
the City, first from the viewpoint of tramp and beggar, and
afterward from that of successful author at whom "pub
lishers were trying to throw money in the form of advances
on unperformed work, ' ' seemed to have unbalanced his pre-
ceptions and sent him reasoning in a circle like that of cer
tain young German philosophers.

"It's all a madness, " he would gird. " 'Why should
anybody do any thing V is my continual thought when I am
in New York. I am being shaved : I look up into the face
of the man who is using the razor on me, and wonder why
he doesn't cut my throat with it. I stare with amazement
at the elevator-boy in the hotel, that he doesn't throw
everything to the winds and let loose in one hell of a smash-
up, just for the whimsey of it!"

At the opera, he brooded and made notes. If the music
reached him at all, it was not as music, but as an urge
toward other thoughts and speculations. "Music? It is a

JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 105

drug," said he. "I have asked several men and women for
a definition of music. George Sterling comes the nearest to
satisfying — a drug. It sets me dreaming like a hasheesh-
eater."

We sat at the Winter Garden. He filled the evening
agonizing mentally over the probable careers, in the thea
trical shambles, of the choms girls, beautiful mere children
that they were, flown like moths to the bright lights that
were consuming them.

We supped at the Revolutionists' Club, and afterward
inspected a mile or so of the Ghetto, peering into the un-
ventilated gloom of "inside rooms, " at the sullen pasty
faces of the inmates. Jack moved about, either silently, as
if playing his part in a nightmare, or arguing strenuously
as if against time.

Up-town or down-town, it seemed as if all normal spon
taneity had fled from him, and I could but exist in hope
that the man, who was as though a thousand-thousand
leagues apart from me, might one day come .suddenly
to his own again, to the healthy, vital boy that was himself.

After one reception that was given in our honor, when
a newspaperwoman had seized the occasion to poke a little
fun at the bride's obvious devotion, Jack sneered with
mirthless laugh: "What did you expect? — Any natural
human appreciation of anything natural and human, in
New York f"

It was about this time that The Cosmopolitan Magazine
had issued a challenge to a few of America's thinking
writers, to contribute articles on the theme "What Life
Means to Me." Jack had not yet found leisure in which
even to ponder what he should say ; but a conversation with
Edwin Markham stirred him to action:

"How are you going about it f " asked the white-maned
poet, his splendid dark eyes bent upon the younger man.

"Damned 'f I know!" smiled Jack. "How are you?79

Followed a discussion, Mr. Markham appreciating

106 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Jack's uncompromising socialist approach to the subject,
but doubtful of its expediency as regarded the magazine
editors.

But when the Jack London production appeared in Thg
Cosmopolitan, it was without editorial blue elision, " Which
is why I like to work for Hearst, " Jack repeated an oft-
voiced opinion. "Writers for Hearst, special writers like
myself, are paid well for expanding their own untrammeled
views. ' ' ( Once he expatiated : ' i Why, when I returned from
Manchuria and presented my expense account, the Examiner
editor said, 'For God's sake, London, do itemize this a little
before I send it in ! ' I did this, and the unquestioned total
was remitted in due course. " So meticulously, indeed, had
The Examiner observed the details of Jack's war correspon
dence, that he had been greatly entertained, upon his re
turn, to notice that wherever he had queried his own spell
ing, the " (Spl?) " with which he had preceded the word was
left untampered!)

In Jack London's "What Life Means to Me" (final
article in book entitled "Bevolution"), one reads what is
perhaps his most impassioned committal of himself as a
rebel toward the shames and uncleannesses of the capitalist
system. Here he dedicates himself to what he sees as his
Holy Grail, to "the one clean, noble and alive" thing worth
working for — George Sterling's definition of Socialism.
In the essay Jack hints at some of his experiences, east and
west, more than one of them in the immediate past of his
lecturing tour, and what he learned therein concerning the
women and men of the ' ' tottering edifice ' ' of the upper crust
of Society. His challenge is flung to that thin and cracking
upper crust as he saw it: "with all its rotten life and un-
buried dead, its monstrous selfishness and sodden mate
rialism. ' '

The only break in the New York days was when Jack
went to New Haven to give the "Be volution" lecture at

JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 107

Yale University, under title of "The Coming Crisis. " To
my everlasting regret I was too weak to accompany him.
He was invited to speak by the author of that exquisite,
human Irish idyl, "My Lady of the Chimney Corner/'
Reverend Alexander Irvine, who represented the state com
mittee and the New Haven Local. Jack cut out several
less important affairs, and gave to Connecticut January 26.
No theater nor hall being available, the Socialists, includ
ing members of the Intercollegiate Society, had held an in
formal Smoker in an ivied tower in Vanderbilt Hall of the
august college, and hatched the critical scheme of getting
the Faculty interested in bidding Jack London, famous
young litterateur, to grace Woolsey Hall, Yale's million-
dollar white marble memorial.

Dr. Irvine commissioned an astute, socialistically-bent
student to take the matter up, first, with an officer of Yale
Union, a debating society. The seed fell on fertile ground.
"The officer of the Yale Union, " says Dr. Irvine, in a de
lightful illustrated brochure which he afterward compiled,
"was a youth of exceeding great callowness.

" 'They say he's socialistically inclined, Doctor/ he
said.

" ' Rather,' I replied.

" 'Well,' he said, 'I suppose we'll have to take our
chances.' "

Dr. Irvine guaranteed the hall rent, advertising, and
so forth, provided an admission fee of ten cents might be
charged, which was agreed upon.

It really was a shame, what these graceless free-thinkers
put over upon President Hadley. One of the leading Pro
fessors, although apprehensive of Jack's "radical ten
dencies," was yet reasonable: "Yale is a University,"
enounced he, "and not a monastery. Besides, Jack Lon
don is one of the most distinguished men in the world. ' '

Dr. Irvine tells : "A few hours after it was decided that
we could have Woolsey Hall the advertising began. The

108 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

factories and shops were bombarded with dodgers. Every
tree on the campus bore the mysterious inscription: 'Jack
London at Woolsey Hall.' Comrade Dellfant painted a
poster which gripped men by the eyes. In it Comrade Lon
don appears in a red sweater and in the background the
lurid glare of a great conflagration. . . . On the morning of
the 26th Yale — official and unofficial — awoke as if she had
been dreaming. She rubbed her eyes and again scanned
the trees and the billboards. Then the officers of the Yale
Union were run down. They had previously run each other
down. Explanations were in order all around. Several of
the Yale Union boys — in pugilistic parlance — lost their little
goats. They were scared good and stiff. Several Yale Dons
got exceedingly chesty over the affair. But the New Yale
took a hand, and Professors Kent and Phelps counseled a
square deal and fair play. One student, in sympathy with
the meeting, said: "Yale Union and many of the Faculty
are sweating under the collar for fear London might say
something socialistic. '

But it was definitely settled that the lecture could
not be called off and the only thing was to make the best
of it. "When we arrived on the scene, " Dr. Irvine refers
to Jack and himself, "the boys still believed that any ref
erence to Socialism would be merely incidental.7' Jack's
friend, by the way, in his spirited account attires the speak
er, with marked respect, in a white flannel shirt ! Friends
and enemies alike insisted upon his wearing flannel !

The crowd that packed Woolsey Hall represented every
social phase of New Haven and its suburbs — a hundred pro
fessors and ten times as many students ; many hundreds of
workingmen; many hundreds of citizens; many hundreds
of Socialists. "But," the humorous Irish divine remarks,
"the Socialists were so overwhelmed by the bourgeois
atmosphere that there was not the slightest attempt to ap
plaud during the entire length of the lecture." And the
Socialist "bouncers" who had been surreptitiously sta-

JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YOEK CITY 109'

tioned throughout the big audience, in reserve for possible
ructions, held their idle hands.

"For over two hours the audience gave the lecturer a
respectful hearing. A woman — a lady — went out swearing.
A few students tried hard to sneer, but succeeded rather
indifferently. Jack London gripped them by the intellect
and held them to the close. Following the lecture, Comrade
London was invited to a student's room — one of the largest
— and there he answered questions until midnight. As the
clock struck twelve a member of the Yale Union came to me
and asked me seriously if I thought there was any hope of
keeping London for a week! 'We can fit him up here,' he
said, 'in fine shape.'

"There was a second conference at Mory's and some
tired intellects were handled rather roughly by the guests
of the evening — but the students clung to him and escorted
him in the we sma ' hours up Chapel Street toward the So
cialist parsonage where another reception was awaiting
him.

"A Professor of Yale," Dr. Irvine concludes, "told
me a few days after the lecture that it was the greatest in
tellectual stimulus Yale had had in many years, and he
sincerely hoped that London would return and expound
the Socialist program in the same hall."

Jack had been advised beforehand as to certain faulty
acoustics in the beautiful auditorium. That he lent no
deaf ear may be judged from one of the newspapers, which
also gives a hint upon his platform personality at that
time :

". . . he walked to the edge of the stage and began to
speak in a clear voice, which reached easily to the farthest
corner of the hall. He used scarcely any gestures, and rare
ly raised his voice even to emphasize a point. His emphasis
he got by reiteration. ' '

As for his countenance, in a photograph taken with

110 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Dr. Irvine, there can be noticed the strange, haggard look
he wore during that period.

His immediate treatment by the New Haven dailies
was one of leniency, not lacking the dignity of at least
trying to quote him verbatim. He was not flattered by the
portrait they published, since it was of some one else,
youthfully apostolic in appearance, arrayed quite differ
ently from Jack's reputed "white flannel shirt. "

While the local press was minded to be indulgent and
the University as little unduly excited as had been Har
vard in its turn, the trustees of Derby Neck Library, in the
same State, rose in a denunciatory body and repudiated, to
all intents and purposes forever, the entire works of Jack
London. Further misquoting his "to hell with the con
stitution " pronouncement, those opinion creators exhorted
the public, in no uncertain terms, likewise to spurn all
periodicals containing Jack's stories.

It had happened that Mr. Melville E. Stone, general
manager of the Associated Press, spoke in New Haven upon
the same evening with Jack London. But whenever asked,
by sympathizers, regarding the policy of the Derby Neckers,
if he thought Mr. Stone's presence had anything to do with
the deluge of adverse newspaper notoriety which followed.
Jack invariably insisted: "Not in the least. I am per
sonally convinced that Mr. Stone had nothing to do with it. ' '

But it was ludicrous how the tune of the press changed
from "the brilliant young author" to criticisms such as,
"pathologically he is a neurasthenic," or it disposed of him
lightly as "that socialist sensation-monger who calls him
self Jack London." It is noteworthy, however, that his
mother's home town, Massillon, Ohio, supported an editor
with a sense of proportion, for he naively propounded, in
The Morning Gleaner, "Must a novelist necessarily admire
the Constitution?"

The truth is, that the wide controversy as to black
listing Jack's books caused an alarming slump in sales for

JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YOEK CITY 111

some time to come. He, who always maintained his unfit-
ness for physical martyrdom : ' ' I 'd tell anything under tor
ture 1" — thus sacrificed unflinchingly for his beliefs, mar
tyred his brain faculties in the cause of Truth.

About the nearest the capitalist editors leaned toward
championing him, or at least reacting to the high-handed
imposition of arbitrary standards upon readers of Derby
Neck or other communities, was when they voiced some
thing of President "Wheeler's earlier sentiments as to the
unlidding of highly explosive propaganda.

Came the ninth and last day that parted us from our
western trek. Whisked from a luncheon of celebrities to
the Twentieth Century Limited, we were settled in our sec
tion and the car gliding homeward, when Jack, suddenly,
with a sigh, nodded his curly head and as suddenly fell
asleep. All strain was erased from his features — it was the
face of a dreaming child that slipped into the hollow of my
shoulder, ordained from aforetime. When he awoke, and
consciousness had focused in his eyes, they looked up into
mine with a matter-of-course recognition of content. Upon
his tongue was speech of home — and how were the dear
Brown Wolf, and that rabbity little bay mare, Fleet, which
the young Aliens had sold us along with other farm per
quisites when they vacated the old house on the Hill place?

It was preciously similar to the way he had emerged
from his thrall on that epochal spring day in Nunn's
Canyon. And I was to learn, whensoever great Gotham
claimed its price and prize of his unresting heart and brain,
that I must deal with another personality than the wonted
Jack London.

CHAPTER XXIX

CHICAGO; RETURN TO OAKLAND, GLEN ELLEN; EARTHQUAKE

1906

CHICAGO, noises and drafts and sifting soot and all,
seemed to reach to us east-worn travelers like home
and peace, despite the rushing stop-over that had been
charted.

On Sunday, January 28, Jack lectured to the Socialists
at the West Side Auditorium, introduced by A. M. Simons,
editor of the International Socialist Review. Standing-room
only, and that all taken, was the situation long before Jack
had risen to speak.

On Monday he repeated "The Social Revolution " at the
University of Chicago, and the Socialists were more than
ever elate that the "magnificent lecture of Comrade Lon
don " should be staged in the "intellectual stronghold of
Standard Oil." Kent Hall, which had been opened to the
Sociological Club, was incapable of holding the mob bent
upon seeing and hearing its famous mouth-piece, to say
nothing of the students themselves and a horde of citizens.

It was a fine sight to me, the hundreds overflowing on to
the stage itself, sidewalks jammed outside, and more coming
every second. Things were growing tense. The dissatisfied
murmur of the many denied admission floated into the
packed playhouse. Then an usher climbed before the foot
lights and announced that the meeting would adjourn to
Mandel Hall — Mandel Hall! the auditorium consecrated to
the most dress-parade functions of the great University,
and even known to have been refused to the minor colleges
for their commencement exercises.

112

BETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 113

The galleries had been barred; but when the throng
had swept aside the helpless ushers and occupied every
foot of space, seat and aisle, fear of infringing fire regula
tions caused the galleries to be thrown open.

The dailies of Chicago, still smarting under the sup
pressed wedding news, as well as from Jack's late attacks,
from the Atlantic Coast, upon her sweat-shop atrocities,
naturally let him have the broadside of their ridicule and
enmity. But somehow, so fond were we of the city, it failed
to offend.

Before we said good-by, Mr. Simons and his attractive
and learned wife had us to the University dissecting rooms
aforementioned, as well as to the Armour and Swift stock
yards and slaughtering plants. And while we were on the
trail of unpleasant but instructive sights of the world in
which we live, we spent a night going through one section
of Chicago's "red-light" district.

Our last sight-seeing, ere we left on the 31st for St. Paul,
was of Hull House, where we made the acquaintance of Miss
Jane Addams. It Was a treat to listen to a discussion be
tween Miss Addams and Jack London — each approaching
the same heartfelt problems from widely divergent angles.

"Well," Jack observed, stretching himself in the Pull
man, ' ' the Little Woman has added a number of strange ex
periences to her life. And you don't know," he broke out,
"you can't guess, what it means to me, to have you by my
side everywhere, in everything I do and see. I am not
lonely any more. Wherever I go, — at least, wherever it is
possible for me to take you, I want you with me — I want
you to know the world as I know it, the good and the bad
of it. It means the world to me that you don't flinch
from any of it, so far as I can see. — In fact, ' ' his tone went
grave and his brow severe, before breaking into laughing
speech, "the way that you, shameless women that you are,
tenderly raised a vegetarian, put away that hearty lunch

114 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

after seeing animals slaughtered all forenoon, worries me
about your immortal soul!"

"But you will kindly remember/' I came back, "that I
confined my depredations solely to bivalves and prawns !"

In the little diary of that day's ride I find: "Jack says
we two are living in a Land of Love, wherever we are."
There is less tender notation to the effect that I was sorely
beaten at both casino and cribbage; also mention of our
finishing Turgenev's "On the Eve" and beginning Gis-
sing's "The Unclassed," reading aloud, turn about.

At St. Paul, Jack lectured for the Lyceum Bureau. We
visited the handsome State Capitol, fashioned throughout,
marbles and all, from native American materials. We sat
through an exciting wrestling match in the Armory. And
nothing would do but Jack must take part in an impromptu
"curling" tournament. It was with keen enjoyment he
drove the heavy but elusive disks over the constantly swept
ice-rink, and the very picture of a Scotch laddie was he, in
borrowed tarn o'shanter and woolen plaid. We heard later,
much to his amusement, that the driver of the automobile
that returned us over the hard snow to the hotel, had been
arrested for speeding!

Grand Forks, North Dakota, was the next jump, where
we were entertained by President Merrifield of the State
University, and in this city on February 3 were given Jack's
two final lectures. The "first and last tour," so far as the
speaking end of it was concerned, had terminated — untime
ly, for Jack was tired and ill from the long siege, and had
crossed off a number from the itinerary. On the train he
wrote Cloudesley Johns:

"I called off the Mills [B. Fay Mills, The Evangelist] debate
because he requested me to, and because the only alternative was a
refined and sublimated statement that had nothing in it to debate
about. Have been miserably sick, and have cancelled a whole
string of lectures, including all California lectures. I sent you a

EETUEN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 115

wire canceling Owen debate. ... I won't get down to Los Angeles
this spring. ' '

The remainder of the journey was without special event,
except that our train was delayed above beautiful Dunsmuir,
in California, by a freight wreck ahead in a canyon. The
passengers made a picnic of it, wandering about the adjacent
country ; and we twain, being immersed in Selma Lagerlof 's
"Gosta Berling," reclined upon a grassy slope and read
to each other. I think it will be seen, by now, why Jack and
I were never bored, no matter how long nor uninteresting,
in the estimate of some mortals, our traverse. Life was
not long enough in which to read the books we desired,
to do the work laid out, to talk of the myriad things sug
gested by other myriad things ; nor to love.

At three o'clock, the last but one morning before we
reached Oakland, Jack woke me in my berth. Disturbing
my rest being a tacit taboo, I was startled ; but his instant
whisper, shaken with eagerness, reassured: " Throw on
your kimono and come out on the platform with me. I
want to show you something — youVe got to see it!"

It was indeed " something " — great Shasta, upthrust
14,000 feet, snow-crowned, into the moonlit, night-blue dome
of the sky; and the Lassen Buttes, stark and flat in the
beams of a setting moon, like peaks cut from heavy dull-
gold cardboard. Eight years thereafter, in Mexico, when
General Funston remarked that he had read in "El Im-
parcial V telegraphic column that Mt. Lassen was in erup
tion, my mind flew back to that hour before dawn when Jack
and I, so airily clad, arm-in-arm on the lurching vestibule
platform, gazed out upon the fairy scene, and spoke in
hushed tones.

The Oakland reporters flocked to Jack upon his return,
and to their queries he repeated that if his marriage had
proved invalid in Illinois, he would have remarried in every

116 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

state in the Union. Keferring to some misreport about
himself, I find this from the Oakland Herald:

"Yes, that was another case of being the victim of re
porters' readjustment of facts. Oh, I know I have been a
newspaperman myself — thereby perhaps I know so well
how impossible it is for reporters to avoid perverting facts.
Oh, heavens, no! I am not trying to demonstrate that re
porters are natural-born liars, and yet. . . .

"Why, do you know, while I was in Chicago the other
day, I had two reporters struggle with my immortal soul
for hours trying to get me to say that I am a believer in
free love — which I am not at all. They struggled nobly,
but I stood firm to the argument that the family group is
the very hub of things.

"But then I rather enjoy this misrepresentation. It is
amusing; and besides you know, it's fine advertising! And
I don't take myself seriously, so can take all that's said
about me as a joke, for I always try to laugh at the in
evitable."

Jack had concluded to cease paying rent in Oakland ; and
shortly after our arrival, as man and wife, at the little flat
in Telegraph Avenue, we set about finding a suitable house
for his mother and Johnnie, as well as Mammy Jennie. One
was purchased on Twenty-Seventh Street, Jack's ultimate
decision influenced by the handsome woods of its interior
finishing, for he was fond of good lumber. One room in the
upper story we reserved for town headquarters.

By mid-month we were on the way to our true home,
and were met at the Glen Ellen station by "Werner Wiget,
who had long since changed his abode from the Fish Eanch
to the farm-house up the mountain, where now he was in
charge, under my Aunt's supervision in Jack's absence.

"Jack's House," at Wake Eobin, as it has ever since
been known, served as formerly for writing quarters and
Manyoungi 's sleeping place. Other living rooms, added to

BETUBN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 117

Wake Eobin Lodge proper, and spoken of as the Annex,
were in readiness for our use, and a neat and comely neigh
bor, Mrs. Grace Parrent, who wanted to swell her own
family exchecquer for some special purpose, had engaged
to cook and ply her deft French needle in preparing me for
the round-world voyage.

It was a sort of sublimated camping. Our winter table
was set in a corner of the spotless kitchen that was odorous
of new pine; and later on, when spring's caprices had
quieted, the table was removed out under the laurels at
the brookside, where our crocked butter and cream cooled in
the ripples. Mrs. Parrent 's excellent repasts were en
joyed to the music of tuneful Korean treebells that Man-
youngi knew well how to place to advantage among the bays
and oaks. Jack and I had discovered many tastes in com
mon, even to a fondness for olive oil as a culinary lubricator,
in preference to the animal fats. He had acquired his
among the Greek fishermen, I in my Aunt's vegetarian
household.

Jack was not yet looking quite himself, the sunken
shadows still lurking about his eyes ; and a marked decrease
in weight was noticeable. I was aware of an almost painful
relief in that he was once more out of the turmoil of urban
life and immersed in laying plans for the summer's work
and play, the building of his deep-sea, boat, and the modest
improvement of the "Blessed Ranch," as he lovingly re
ferred to it. Consequently, it was with positive alarm that
I regarded the managing editor of a large eastern monthly,
who arrived from New York two days after our return to
Wake Robin, his mission to induce Jack immediately to re-
cross the continent, for the purpose of making a first-hand
study of the southern cotton-mills in relation to child-labor.

Caring — perhaps sinfully, who shall say? — more for the
imminent welfare of this man of mine than for all the serfs
of all ages, I sat at the interview silently exerting every

118 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

fiber of me against his going. I was certain, from observa
tion of his internal restlessness, that if he went back into the
cities so soon, there might be dire consequences. Rea
soning back to his state antedating the summer of 1905, I
knew he had had enough, for the time being.

The editor was plainly anxious not to find his journey
in vain. Eloquently he pleaded. Jack pondered with
troubled eyes, and would not give answer until he and I
had talked it over. He wanted to do the thing; his con
science pressed him to do it. And though he recognized
as well as I the need in which he stood of freedom from what
he had only just escaped, he would not have shirked even
if his actual life had depended upon it. But balanced against
this new work was the work he had already pledged, to
gether with other responsibilities ; and there came to aid his
ultimatum a slight misstep of the editor, who let drop that
if Jack did not undertake the commission, another man,
only a little less noted — Socialist — was in view. "Let
the other fellow have a chance/' often a slogan of Jack
London's, was the outweighing grain in the scales.

Jack knew, and why, though I said little and tried not
to look too much, that I was dead-set against his going. I
never learned precisely what he thought of my attitude
— whether he blamed me for being instrumental, by mere
woman-mothering possessiveness and solicitude, in with
holding him from a duty, or was glad I agreed that he stay
west for a while. If there resided in his mind any un
flattering criticism, it died with him. It may be that some
thing restrained me from asking; and joy in his augmented
well-being — always my religious care — took the place of
morbid self-examination. Before I desert the subject,
let it be said that the second-choice of author and investi
gator did a splendid piece of work — "Better than I could
have done it, by far!" Jack enunciated his satisfaction;
hence the ultimate good was served. Furthermore, one
of Jack's finest bits of writing, after our return, was a story

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 119

of the making of a hobo by the process of cotton-mill child-
slavery. This was i i The Apostate, ' ' which, following serial
publication, came to have wide circulation in pamphlet
form through a Socialist publishing house in Chicago.
(The book " Revolution " contains this tale.)

How more than busy we were! Aside from regular
writing, which was soon resumed, Jack, with eye to home-
building, ordered fruit-trees of all descriptions suitable
to the latitude, and seventy-odd varieties of table-grapes
— orchard and vineyard to be planted upon an amphi
theater behind a half-circle we had chosen for the house-
site. Johannes Reimers tendered the benefit of his pro
fessional advice about the trees and vines, and ordered for
us a hedge of Japanese hawthorne to flourish between or
chard and house-space, which in time grew into a glory of
orange and red berries alternating with a season of white
blossoming. The plot was on the lip of a deep wooded ravine
which was the Ranch 's southern boundary, ancient redwood
and spruce, Jightning-riven and eagle-nested, accenting the
less majestic growth. We never wearied of riding Belle and
Ban to the spot, in our minds' eyes the vision of a rugged
stone house that was to rise like an indigenous growth from
the grassy semi-circle.

While occupied upon two Alaskan tales, "A Day's
Lodging" and "The Wit of Porportuk" (bound in "Love
of Life" and "Lost Face"), Jack arranged the manuscripts
for two short-story volumes, "Moon Face" and "Love of
Life," published in 1906 and 1907 respectively. Next,
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was reviewed. Jack, who
apositely dubbed it "The ' Uncle Tom's Cabin' of Wage-
Slavery," sadly observed thereafter that the most conspic
uous result of this expose of labor conditions in the stock
yards was only to make the public more careful what it put
into its stomach.

While he was working on another story, "When God

120 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Laughs, " a letter was received from Mr. E. H. Sothern,
asking him to write a socialistic play for himself and Miss
Julia Marlowe ; but nothing ever came of this.

Before starting upon a new novel, i i Before Adam, ' ' Jack
had, in addition to the above-noted short work, completed
an article, "The Somnambulists " (in "Revolution"), also
the stories "Created He Them" and "Just Meat" (both
in "When God Laughs" collection), and "Finis" (in "The
Turtles of Tasman.") Then, by way of relaxation and
practice on drama form, he did a curtain-raiser from
his story "The Wicked Woman" — this flick of drama
going into the volume "The Human Drift," brought out
posthumously.

During March, he visited Oakland to deliver a Social
ist lecture at Dietz Opera House. Following this event,
Jack London was talked of for Socialist Governor at the
next elections. While in Oakland, we selected a two-seated
rig and a runabout. Jack had set his heart upon a buck-
board, such as one in which his neighbor, Judge Carroll
Cook, used to meet friends at the railroad station. But
we were in urgent need of a vehicle for the same pur
pose, and snapped up the neat uncovered wagon with yellow
wheels, looking forward to a buckboard later on. Jack
never acquired that buckboard. Instead, when the Napa
Winships went in for gasolene, we bought out their other
rolling stock, which came to serve all purposes.

Mrs. Louise Clark, a neighbor, sold us the horse Selim,
a black handful of abounding energy. Jack, in the pro
cess of subduing Selim and the silly Fleet to gentle uses,
waxed in soft-spoken patience unbelievable to his old pals
who came to look on. We took much interest, also, in
forming different spans with our four light horses, har
nessed to the new four wheelers.

And oh, yes — the good Brown Wolf, tiny pointed ears
flattened ingratiatingly back into his russet ruff, and long
pink tongue lolling dumb delight and pride, presented us

EETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 121

to a new family of puppies. One of these went to Jack's
children. "I don't think much of the rest," he ruefully
surveyed them and their mongrel if excellent mother ; so
we kept none of the litter.

Presently the astounding booksmith had begun his atav
istic "Before Adam," which came out in Everybody's
Magazine. Upon its publication a hue and cry went
up, originating in a men's club, to the effect that Jack
London had plagiarized Stanley Waterloo's "The Story
of Ab." Be it said, however, that Mr. Waterloo did not
start the trouble. Jack was frank to admit that ' ' The Story
of Ab" had been one of his sources of material. "But
Waterloo was not scientific," he stoutly defended, "and I
have made a scientific book out of my re-creation on the
subject." So correct was his assumption, that "Before
Adam" went into the universities of the United States as a
text-book in Anthropology. To George Sterling, in June,
he wrote :

"Have just expressed you MS of ' Before Adam.' It's
just a skit, ridiculously true, preposterously real. Jump
on it."

England, even that early, in the character of Red Eye
saw a "cryptic reference to the German Emperor."

Jack, who derived material from every available source
and especially from the newspapers as representing life,
was eternally dogged at the heels by small men at home and
abroad who charged plagiarism — these having little com
merce with one, more generous, who said, "If I could by
hook or crook write anything worth Jack London's copy
ing, I should consider it a privilege. ' ' As for Jack, he did
not try to boycott those who benefited by his creations.
Rather was he pleased that he had been first !

That year of 1906, sketchy as was our domestic menage,
many visitors came to the Lodge annex, and Auntie let us
spill over into the main house. Among the names in my
journal I come upon our good friends the Granville-Shueys

122 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

— Dr. Shuey was custodian of the welfare of Jack London's
troublesome teeth to the end of the patient's life; Mr.
Bamf ord ; I. M. Griffin, the artist, a number of whose can
vases, painted in the neighborhood, Jack purchased ; Henry
Meade Bland, of San Jose, at all times one of Jack's most
tireless biographers ; Felix Peano, sculptor, in whose house,
La Capriccioso, Jack had once lived; young Eoy Nash, of
whom "The People of the Abyss" had made a Socialist;
Ernest Untermann, author, and translator of Karl Marx;
the George Sterlings; different members of the talented
family of Partingtons; George Wharton James, who
charmed with his social qualities and music, and later pub
lished most readable articles upon his visit; Elwyn Hoff
man, poet ; Herman Whitaker ; Xavier Martinez, artist and
prince of bohemians — "Sometimes I think," Jack once re
marked, "that George Sterling and 'Marty' are the realest
bohemians I have ever known ! " ; Maud Younger, settlement
worker and philanthropist ; and a long list beside.

Our amusements consisted in exploring, alone or with
our guests, the infinite variety of the one hundred and twen
ty-nine acres of Jack's "Beauty Eanch"; driving or riding
to points in the valley — say Cooper's Grove, a stately group
of redwoods; or to Hooker's Falls across in the eastern
range ; or to Santa Eosa, as when we drove Professor Edgar
Larkin, of Mt. Lowe Observatory, to call upon Luther Bur-
bank; or to the valley resorts to swim, for a change from
Sonoma Creek, in the warm mineral tanks.

During the Moyer-Haywood trouble in Idaho, Jack was
urger by The Eocamwer to go there and report proceedings
in his own way ; but he was too involved at home to spare the
time. Nevertheless, he managed to sandwich in a rousing
article, which was printed by the Socialist Voice, of Oakland.

All of which reads like the crowded year it was ; yet it
is but a sample of eleven surpassingly full years we
were to live out together. In addition to what I have set

EETUEN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 123

down, Jack read numberless books of all sizes and titles, and
we still found opportunity to share, aloud, H. G. Wells, de
Maupassant, Gertrude Atherton, Sudermann, Phillpotts,
Saleeby, Herbert Spencer, and countless others, including
plays — among them Bernard Shaw's, Clyde Fitch's, Ib
sen's ; and, above all, endless poetry. It is a curious jumble,
I know; but Jack read rapaciously — both of the meatiest
and the trashiest. He must know * ' what the other fellow is
doing. ' '

One day, he received a letter from a bank in Billings,
Montana, informing him that two checks bearing his signa
ture had been returned from Chicago marked "No Funds. "
It was an instance of the ' * doubles ' ' who were fast coming
into being. The nearest Jack had ever been to Billings
was when, a few months previous, we had passed through
on our westward way. Jack promptly forwarded to the
bank his photograph and signature, and also an outside
cover of the current Everybody's Magazine, on which
under a sort of ' * f ootprints-on-the-sands-of-time " illustra
tion for "Before Adam" his autograph was reproduced.
The Bank was finally convinced ; but from all accounts the
imposter had closely resembled Jack London, and the hand
writing was not dissimilar.

This was, I think, the only time a "double" passed
worthless checks ; but several others worked the country in
capacities more or less injurious to the original. One of
them stirred up revolution in Mexico, long before 1914,
at which time Jack London paid his first and last visit to
that restless republic, as war correspondent with General
Funston. Another winnowed Oklahoma and adjoining ter
ritory, and the celebrated "101 Ranch," for all they were
worth in board and lodging and information. Still others
led girls astray, and many the piteous letters, addressed to
places where Jack had never set foot, or when the pair of us
were on the other side of the world, begging restitution for
anything from stolen virtue to diamonds. Jack tried to get

124 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

in touch with these floating impersonators, promising
safe departure if they would only come to the Ranch and
entertain him with their methods. But even when his letters
never returned, there were no replies. While we were honey
mooning in Cuba, according to one side of a correspondence
that came into Jack's possession, a spurious J. L. was carry
ing on an affair with a mother of several children in Sacra
mento, California.

On April 18, 1906, there came, in a sense, the l i shock of
our lives. " One need hardly mention that it was the Great
Earthquake, which, most notable of consequences, destroyed
the "modern imperial city" of San Francisco as no other
modern imperial city has been destroyed. If it had not been
for this stunning disaster to the larger place, the ruin
of our county seat, Santa Rosa, in which many lives
were crushed out, would have commanded the attention
and sympathy of the world. As it was, refugees from the
Bay metropolis began presently to straggle up-country,
only to find the pretty town prone in a scarcely laid dust of
brick and mortar and ashes.

Jack's nocturnal habits of reading, writing, smoking,
and coughing, or sudden shifts of posture (he could not
move his smallest finger without springing alive from head
to foot), not being exactly a remedy for my insomnia, we
ordinarily occupied beds as far apart as possible. A few
minutes before five, on the morning of the 18th, upstairs at
Wake Robin, my eyes flew open inexplicably, and I wondered
what had stirred me so early. I curled down for a morning
nap, when suddenly the earth began to heave, with a sicken
ing onrush of motion for an eternity of seconds. An abrupt
pause, and then it seemed as if some great force laid hold
of the globe and shook it like a Gargantuan rat. It was the
longest half -minute I ever lived through.

Now, I am free to confess, I do not like earthquakes.
Never, child and woman, had I liked earthquakes. But my

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 125

mind had been made up long since that while I wasted time
being afraid of them, less terrified or at any rate more ob
servant persons were able to take in phenomena which I
had missed. And, so help me, when the April 18 quake got
under way, and though very lonely in the conviction that
my end was approaching in leaps and bounds, I lay quite
still, watching the tree-tops thrash crazily, as if all the winds
of all quarters were at loggerheads. The sharp undula
tion stopping, Jack and I met our guests, Mr. and Mrs.
Reimers, in the living-room, and we all had the same tale to
relate — of watching, from our pillows, the possessed antics
of the trees ; only, all but myself had had a view of the trunks
rather than the tops.

When Jack and I ran over to the barn still rented at
the Fish Ranch, we found our saddle animals had broken
their halters and were still quivering and skittish. Willie,
the chore-boy, said the huge madrono tree near by had lain
down on the ground and got up again — which was less lurid
than many impressions to which we listened that weird day.

In half an hour after the shock, we were in our saddles,
riding to the Ranch, from which height could be disting
uished a mighty column of smoke in the direction of San
Francisco, and another northward where lies Santa Rosa.
In the immediate foreground at our feet a prodigious dust
obscured the buildings of the State Home for the Feeble
minded.

"Why, Mate Woman, " Jack cried, his eyes big with
surmise, "I shouldn't wonder if San Francisco had sunk.
That was some earthquake. We don't know but the At
lantic may be washing up at the feet of the Rocky Moun
tains I"

Our beautiful barn — the shake had disrupted its nearly
finished two-foot-thick stone walls, and to our horror re
vealed that the rascally Italian contractor from Sonoma,
despite reasonable overseeing, had succeeded in rearing

126 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

mere shells of rock, filling in between with debris of the flim
siest. Jack's face was a study.

" Jerry-built, " he murmured, hurt in his voice, "and I
told him the solid, honest thing I wanted — and did not ques
tion his price. What have I done to him, or anybody, that
he should do this thing ?"

He turned his back upon the swindle, for there were
other things to see; and I could almost vouch that his
wrecked property did not enter his head for the next sev
eral days — any more than he would bother about a worri
some letter or problem until the moment came to dispose
of it.

"And anyway," he dismissed the subject as we turned
down-mountain, "it's lucky the heavy tile roof wasn't al
ready placed, and some poor devil sleeping under it ! "

One day, weeks afterward, the Italian had the ill-con
sidered "nerve" to call at "Jack's House." I remember
that we were showing the work-room to the Winships. At
the knock, Jack turned and recognized the contractor. Fac
ing back to me, he said in a low, vibrating tone : ' ' Mate, will
you attend to him? — send him away, as quickly as possible!"
Never fear that I did not do that same. Once outside, I
said to the man: "You must get out of here qwckl" And
when he started to whine a remonstrance, I repeated, with
glance over-shoulder: "Quick! Get out! And don't ever
come back ! ' '

Back to breakfast, after reconnoitering the neighborhood
as far as the State Home, where, through the perfect dis
cipline, no lives had been sacrificed, we prepared to board
the first train to Santa Kosa, hoping to find another to
San Francisco in the afternoon. And the trains ran,
though not on time, what of twisted rails and litter of fallen
water-tanks along the roadway. Eeports of the Great Fire
and broken water-mains in San Francisco made us long
to be in at the incredible disaster, so long as it had to be.

With no luggage except our smallest hand-bag, which

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 127

we left with the restaurant cashier of the last ferry-boat
permitted to land passengers that night, we started afoot
up old Broadway, and all night roamed the city of hills, prey
to feelings that cannot be described. That night proved
our closest to realizing a dream that came now and
again to Jack in sleep, that he and I were in at the finish
of all things — standing or moving hand in hand through
chaos to its brink, looking upon the rest of mankind in the
process of dissolution.

Having located relatives I knew had been overtaken, and
found them unharmed, Jack and I were free to follow our
own will.

"And I'll never write about this for anybody, " he de
clared, as we looked our last upon one or another familiar
haunt, soon to be obliterated by the ravaging flames that
drove us ever westward to safer points, on and on, in our
ears the muffled detonations of dynamite, as one proud com
mercial palace after another sank on its steel knees, in the
desperate attempt of the city fathers to stay the wholesale
conflagration. And no water.

' ' No, ' ' Jack reiterated. * * I '11 never write a word about
it. What use trying? One could only string big words to
gether, and curse the futility of them."

One impinging picture of those fearful hours was where
two mounted officers, alone of all the population, sat their
high-crested horses at Kearney and Market Streets, eques
trian statues facing the oncoming flames along Kearney.
Hours earlier, we had walked here, two of many; but now
the district was abandoned to destruction that could not
be retarded.

In my eyes there abides the face of a stricken man, per
haps a fireman, whom we saw carried into a lofty doorway
in Union Square. His back had been broken, and as the
stretcher bore him past, out of a handsome, ashen young
face, the dreadful darkening eyes looked right into mine.
All the world was crashing about him and he, a broken thing,

128 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

with death awaiting him inside the granite portals, gazed
upon the last woman of his race that he was ever to see.
Jack, with tender hand, drew me away.

Oh, the supreme ruth of desolation and pain, that night
of fire and devastation ! Yet the miracle persists, that one
saw nothing but cheerful courtesy of one human to another.
And I was to learn more of my mate's cool judgment in
crises. Now and again it seemed as if we would surely be
trapped in some square, where the fourth side had started
to burn. But he had always, and accurately, sensed and
chosen the moment and the way out, when we should have
seen all we could risk.

Toward morning, finding ourselves in the entryway of
a corner house on "Nob Hill" very near the partially-
erected and already-ignited Hotel Fairmont, Jack fell into a
doze; but I was unable to still the tingling of heart and
nerves long enough to drop off even from exhaustion.
Presently a man mounted the steps and inserted a key in
the lock. Seeing Jack and myself on the top tread — he had
had to pick his way through a cluster of Italians and China
men on the lower ones — something impelled him to invite
us in. It was a luxurious interior, containing the treasures
of years. His name was Ferine, the man said, and he did
not learn ours. Suddenly, midway of showing us about, he
asked me to try the piano, and laid bare the keys. I hesi
tated — it seemed almost a cruel thing to do, with anni
hilation of his home so very near. But Jack's whispered
"Do it for him — it's the last time he'll ever hear it,"
sent me to the instrument. The first few touches were
enough and too much for Mr. Ferine, however, and he made
a restraining gesture. If he ever reads this book, I want
him to know that none in poor racked San Francisco that
week was more sorry for him than we.

We must have tramped forty miles that night. Jack's
feet blistered, my ankles were become almost useless, when

EETUBN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 129

next day we sat on a convenient garbage can at Seventh and
Broadway, Oakland, waiting for a street car out Telegraph
Avenue. A pretty young woman accosted the dilapidated
pair we made, with information that food and shelter would
be supplied us refugees at such-and-such address, and
laughed pleasedly when we thanked her and said we had an
uninjured place of our own. Oakland had suffered com
paratively little from the quake, and there were few fires.
Jack of course had ascertained, before we went to San Fran
cisco, that his mother and his children were safe and sound,
with roofs over their heads.

In Glen Ellen once more, we were met with frantic tele
grams from Collier's Weekly, asking for twenty-five hun
dred words, by wire, descriptive of San Francisco. Jack,
still averse to undertake the compressing of his impressions,
or, as he had said, writing at all on the subject, yet con
sidered his now aggravated money-need, with the yacht
and barn-rebuilding in view. And Collier's had offered him
twenty-five cents a word — by far the best figure he had yet
received. It was, I may as well note here, the highest he
ever obtained.

Shaking his bonny shoulders free of all else, that
very day he jumped into the twenty-five hundred word
article. Hot from his hand I snatched the scribbled sheets,
and swiftly typed them. Our team-work soon delivered the
story over the wires, and "just for luck" Jack mailed the
manuscript simultaneously. Followed wild daily messages
from Collier's for a week to come : " Why doesn't your story
arrive V9 il Must have your story immediately, ' ' and, latest,
"Holding presses at enormous expense. What is the mat
ter? Must have story for May Fifth number. "

It seems that the telegraph companies were able to get
service through to the Pacific Coast, but not the reverse.
The posted manuscript was received in the nick of time,

130 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

while the wired one straggled along subsequently to the
other's appearance in the May 5th issue.

Jack, it is only fair to record, entertained the poorest
opinion of his description. ''It's the best stagger I can
make at an impossible thing, " is the way he put it. And
here is an excerpt from a letter to George Sterling, dated
May 31:

"Hopper's article in Everybody's is great. Best story of the
Quake I've seen. My congratulations to him."

Fifteen days after the Earthquake, we treated ourselves
to a two-weeks' holiday. Jack bestrode Ban. Belle, oc
cupied with maternal prospects, I passed by in favor of
the rabbity Fleet. Hatless, with toilet accessories and read
ing matter stowed in saddle-bags behind our Australian
saddles, we set out northerly to see what the quake had
wreaked upon rural California. At this and that resort,
we would feel one or another of the many lighter temblors
that followed the big shake, marking the subsidence of the
"Fault" that is supposed to enter from the sea-bed at Fort
Bragg, and zigzag southeasterly across the State.

Jack, his rumpled poll sun-burned yellow, was a brave
and lovesome sight on his merry steed, whose burnished
chestnut coat threw out lilac gleams as the satiny muscles
moved in the sunlight. The rider threw himself with vim
into our little adventure. He was never tired exploring
with me the nooks of Sonoma County, where Belle and
I had been familiar figures before he came to dwell with
us. And we always found so many common topics to dis
cuss, and parallels in our lives. Why, old man Tarwater.
immortalized in one of the very last stories Jack ever
wrote ("Like Argus of the Olden Times," published in
1919 in volume entitled "The Red One"), had been the sub
ject of one of my Aunt's newspaper articles. I had accom
panied her, years before Jack met Tarwater in Klondike, on
a pilgrimage to his mountain cabin, and sketched that abode

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 131

and himself for an illustration. And there were our teachers
in Oakland, Mrs. Harriet J. Lee and her daughter Elsie — we
had both sat under these charming women, Jack in High
School, and I in Sunday school at Plymouth Avenue Church
on Thirty-fourth Street. It was deliciously preposterous,
this lining up of our mutual experiences.

Not a tap of work did we perform on this real vacation.
There is ample material in my brain for a readable book, in
that idyllic journey through one of California's most attrac
tive regions, unadvertised and undreamed to the casual
tourist. Although I may not relate the details, still, for
the guidance of any whose interest in Jack London's mazy
trail might lead them into these western fastnesses of great
beauty and geological interest, I present the route our
nimble horses bore us:

From Glen Ellen, by Rincon Valley road, through Petri
fied Forest, to Calistoga, in Napa Valley. Calistoga to The
Geysers. Thence to Lakeport, on Clear Lake — a little
Geneva — by way of Highland Springs. We sailed on Clear
Lake.

Lakeport to Ukiah, via Laurel Dell, Blue Lakes. Ukiah
to Willitts. Through grandeurs of mountain and red
wood forest, to logging camp "Alpine." Thence to Fort
Bragg, on the Coast.

From Fort Bragg, down the coast, sleeping at lumber
villages. Navarro, Albion, Greenwood. Thence to Boon-
ville, with luncheon at Philo. Philo to Cloverdale ; thence
to Burke 's Sanitarium. Thence to Santa Rosa, and on
down to Glen Ellen.

Jack, consciously or unconsciously, had studied the
brain-processes of animals since the days of his little dog
Rollo in Oakland. On this long ride, the difference, which
is all the difference in the world, which he noticed between
Fleet and Ban on our return, was that one was tired and

132 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

showed it, and the other, Thoroughbred, keyed to the utter
most step, was tired and did not know it. But when Jack,
after unsaddling, had placed an extra large measure of oats
before the splendid creature, the velvet nozzle went down
with a great, blowing sigh. Brown Wolf, wriggling prodigi
ously, came to bury dumb, eloquent head between his idol
ized master's knees, after which, with a shake of rolling fur
hide, he went to poke his nose into Ban's fodder, taking a
generous mouthful, to our astonishment and the horse's
snorting disapproval. Then, our fingers interlaced, we
two dusty wayfarers trudged across to Wake Eobin, happier
and richer by another united experience.

Near the end of the month, during our absence of two
days in Oakland to attend a rousing Euskin Club dinner in
Jack's honor, Willie one night left Ban out in the Fish
Eanch pasture, where he became entangled in a loose strand
of that accursed invention, barbed wire, which had eluded
our vigilance. Hour upon hour, the poor, helpless thing
sawed one of his beautiful, fleet hind legs to the bone. It
was a sad homecoming to us, and in consultation beside
our drooping, ruined pet we decided he must die. Jack
said, his eyes dark with sorrow:

"Wiget, I'll do it if I have to; but I don't want to. If
you don't mind too much ..." And Wiget had to avert
his face as he replied: "I'll do it for you folks."

In a hammock at the Lodge we sat knowing we could not
fail to hear the shot that would be the ending of our willing
and beloved friend. Jack had carefully instructed his man
to deposit the charge in the middle of the forehead, where
cross-lines drawn from ears to eyes would intersect. When
the sound of the shot rang across the waiting stillness, we
wept unrestrained and unabashed in each other's arms. All
I could think of to solace Jack was to offer him the gift of
my own new filly, Sonoma Maid, granddaughter of the great
Morella, which Belle, in the fullness of her time and in our
absence, had presented to me.

KETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 133

I remember, once, on a steamer voyage, that a fine
horse injured during a rough night had to be killed. A
lamentable botch was made of the execution, and I never
saw Jack London worse upset than he was over the reports
of the animal's inexcusably hard death. "If they'd only
learn how to do a thing like that in the right way!" he
exclaimed, thrashing about in his chair in a manner he
had when suffering mentally.

A preverted order of humaneness, often displayed by
unthinking persons, always came in for harsh language
from Jack. "Men who brag of being too tender-hearted
to kill an aged and suffering animal, or a hopelessly-
wounded or sick one," he would rave," — I don't know any
thing too bad for them. Why don't people think!" And
again : "The only way to kill a cat is to chop off its head,"
he preached. "Death is instantaneous, when the spinal
cord is severed. Drowning, and suffocation by chloroform,
are two of the cruelest methods you can use on a cat. The
other way means instantaneous death, with no terrors of
strangulation. Some people think I'm brutal to advise this,
but the thing is self-evident — oh, what 's the use ! " he would
surrender in disgust. In illustration of indirect brutality,
he told me of something he had done during a short camp
ing expedition, in 1904, with "The Crowd," on the deserted
Kendall Ranch in Grizzly Canyon, near Moraga Valley.

The last tenants had left some time previously, and
were too sensitive and kind-hearted to lay away the family
dog, a large collie, I think Jack said, who was tottering,
from starvation, too old to hunt for himself. "Nobody
else wanted the job of shooting him," Jack went on, "and
it was up to me. You know how I love to kill things," he
interpolated with a wry mouth. "I got the shotgun ready,
and went toward that poor dog, and he crouched when he
saw me coming. God! no one will ever know how I shrank
from that self-imposed task. That dog knew — his poor
old eyes looked straight into mine and did not waver — but

134 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the knowledge of death was in them. He'd been out with a
gun too much in his life not to know what it meant when
one was aimed at a living creature. . . . Oh, yes, I got it
done — first charge . . . He never moved after he dropped. ' '

Jack was capable of such adorable ways. One after
noon, that summer of 1906, he and I, with Manyoungi's help
were sorting over old possessions, making ready long in
advance for our voyage. The Korean came upon my old
French doll, an adult-appearing, jointed model with six
inches of "real" hair. Lifting it tenderly, reverence in
his handsome olive face, the boy carried it to Jack, who
was talking to himself amidst a tumbled mountain of
dusty books — he invariably talked and hummed when doing
work of this kind or filing letters. And Jack, with a dewy
look in his great eyes, held out both grimy hands for the
relic, and kissed it! The act was devoid of affectation
— just a spontaneous expression of all the complication
of his love. "The little woman's doll!" was all he said, re
turning to his work with an odd smile deepening the ' ' pic
tured corners" of his mouth. . . . Once, "after long grief
and pain, ' ' in rare abandon he had pressed those lips to the
hem of my garment.

Even from so brief an absence as the riding jaunt, our
duties had piled up, and we were rushing all hours except
for the swimming, rides to the Ranch, the campfire gather
ings, moonlight romps and games, with boxing, fencing,
kiting, and what not, in the camps of the Connings, the
Selbys, the Brecks, the Reynolds, and my own summering
families.

Blowing soap-bubbles was popular for a time, and cer
tain long-stemmed Korean pipes, among Jack's "loot"
from the orient, came into novel requisition. There were
debates of evenings in the Lodge, to which the older campers
were invited, in which the materialist monist, Jack London,
was somewhat unwillingly pitted against Mr. Edward B.

BETUB-N TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 135

Payne, a far older man whom Jack styled "metaphysi
cian." I should have said attempted debate, for the same
familiar stumbling-block was encountered that had dis
rupted earlier discussions whenever Jack and the meta
physicians locked horns : Jack could not and would not ac
cept the premise offered; and after several futile efforts
of the instigators of the meetings, to ease him surrepti
tiously over the first stages of the argument, the debates
were discontinued.

"Edward's got a beautiful mind, and he's the most
logical rhetorician I ever met in my whole life, ' ' Jack would
defend himself; "but when, in his reasoning, he comes to
the enchanted bridge he has tried to build, on which I am
supposed to reject my solid foundation and step across to
his metaphysical one, I revolt." Martin Luther's "Here I
stand. I can do no otherwise, so help me God ! Amen ! ' ' was
no less firm than Jack London's "I can't help it. I am so
made. I can't see it any other way. I've got to keep my
feet on the concrete."

I have seen him quite white with distress that he had to
spoil a party by depriving guests of the spectacle of him
self routed from his materialistic terra firma and driven
upon the impalpable ground of the metaphysicians with
their, to him, "colossal evasions of mundane interpreta
tions," as our friend Mary Wilshire puts it. "Each of
you," he said, "goes into his own consciousness to explain
anything and everything." Again, "The metaphysician
explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains him
self by the universe." Jack believed that the keenest and
most irresistible impulses toward self-preservation are
shown by what he termed metaphysicians. "Take the
earthquake, for instance," he would rail. "You and I,
and an infidel artist, remained in our beds until well after
the shock. And when we emerged, where did we find the
metaphysicians of the household? — Out of doors, in un
seemly attire, and unable to tell how they got there, but,

136 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

from circumstantial evidence, having arrived on the un
stable earth by way of a first-story window ! ' y

There were swimming visits exchanged that year with
our neighbors the Kudolf Spreckelses and a bevy of Mrs.
Spreckels 's sisters, the Misses Joliffe ; and once we went to
to Napa to see the Winships. But Jack, as a rule, was not
fond of visiting, and occasionally was heard to remark that
the Winships and the Sterlings were practically the only
friends to whose houses he went, and these at wide intervals.
He preferred, in short, to entertain rather than to be enter
tained.

At times, but rarely, he would treat himself to a holiday,
perhaps to read aloud a book that had claimed him for the
moment, or to take some special jaunt. But the fingers of
one hand could easily tally the days when he failed to
deliver ten pages of hand-written manuscript to my type
writer desk. It was my custom to have his previous
day's instalment, typed and words counted, in readiness
upon his table by nine. He loved to read me his morn
ing 's work — and even in the writing of it, if I happened
to pass by, would interrupt himself to let me share what he
had done. The first writing day, in all our days, that this
did not happen, was the first day upon which he wrote no
more.

Evidently this life of closely-wedged activities was quite
to my taste, for at the end of one date 's diary-items I see :
' 1 Happy as an angel !" This may, however, have been
when I had won from Jack some praise or especial appre
ciation; but he was wont ruefully to utter that my finest
heights of bliss were attained when I had beaten him at
cards (which was seldom enough to justify chortling),
or won a bet upon the weather ranging anywhere from ten
cents to ten dollars.

Another and sweeter source of happiness to me would be
when I had played an hour for him while he sat or reclined,
one hand over his eyes, dreaming upon a couch in Auntie's

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 137

cool living-room. The music he then oftenest asked for was
Arthur Footers Rubaiyat Suite, and much of Macdowell —
"The Eagle " and "Sea Pieces " remaining favorites. His
disposition those days was almost always equable, and I
learned to circumvent the blues he had once forewarned he
might be subject to upon the day of completing a long man
uscript. On June 7, he laid down his ink-pencil for the last
time on "Before Adam," first writing in my count of 40,863
words. But there was little or no depression to follow. I
had seen to that, by planning a string of overlapping en
gagements for the day, which left him no moment for relax
ing until sleep-time was at hand. Oh, no — never did I cheat
myself into believing that he did not see through my mach
inations; rather, did he cooperate — but no word jarred
the moment's harmony.

Have I mentioned that he was fond of ordering adver
tised articles! "And if one out of ten proves a real find,
I am repaid for my time and money !" was his argument.
Many were the packages, great and small, that enlivened
our morning mail during preparation for the small-boat voy
age ; for whether emanating from " ad " or catalogue, Jack
meant to leave nothing behind that would contribute to the
venture 's success. Fishing tackle of the most alluring; num
berless strings of beads, and loose beads by the gross, of all
sizes and hues to gladden savage hearts that beat under the
Southern Cross ; gay neckerchiefs and calicoes and ribbons
— nothing was omitted. And the fun we, like veriest chil
dren, had opening our "Christmas packages" from day
to day, can best be imagined.

Early in our comradeship I had noted Jack's habit of
looking ahead, not back. "Leave retrospect to old men
and women. The world is all before me now," was his
pose toward the dead past. While this remained a charac
teristic, the general normal happiness of his new environ
ment rendered him less averse to dwelling upon his yes
terdays. As our united yesterdays lengthened in our

138 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

shadow, he became as fondly addicted as I to reminiscence
of them.

Before me, as I write with his own pen, lies a clipping
referring to "The Iron Heel," which begins: "In one of
Jack London's less important works, there was a descrip
tion of a pitched battle in Chicago, in the near future, by
way of quelling what would now be called a Bolshevist revo
lution." And the commentator adds: "Now the battle
is going on in Berlin." Beside the clipping reposes a let
ter to me from a sociologist, from which I quote as refuta
tion of the other's phrase, "less important works":

"The earlier portion of the book is the most impressive,
the most unanswerable impeachment of the capitalist sys
tem to be found in all the voluminous sociological literature
of our times."

And I feel free to quote Mr. George P. Brett, President
of The Macmillan Company, who published the book :

"I consider 'The Iron Heel' the greatest compendium
of Socialism ever written."

From week to week, in these stirring days of reconstruc
tion following the World War, there come to me, alone
upon Jack London's mountainside, appreciations from all
classes concerning "The Iron Heel," once hated and de
rided and feared by the factions most opposed to one an
other. Jack had gone to work upon it that midsummer of
1906, placing some of its scenes round-about "the sweet
land" in which he had elected to dwell. When the manu
script later failed to find place in any paying magazine, and
saw book-covers, in 1907 during the "panic," mainly be
cause the publishers held a blanket contract bearing Jack
London's sprawling signature, the poor author said regret
fully one day in Hawaii :

"I thought it would be timely, that book; but they're all
afraid of it, Mate Woman." He pointed to letters just

EETUBN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 139

received from the States : ' ' See : the socialists, even my own
crowd, have thrown me down — they decry it as a lugubrious
prophecy; and the other camp, of course, revile it as they
revile everything socialistic they possibly can of mine.

"But," he broke in heatedly upon his reverie, "I didn't
write the thing as a prophecy at all. I really don't think
these things are going to happen in the United States. I
believe the increasing socialist vote will prevent — hope for
it, anyhow. But I will say that I sent out, in 'The Iron
Heel/ a warning of what I think might happen if they don't
look to their votes. That's all."

In the copy he gave me is written : "We that have been
what we Ve been. . . . We that have seen what we 've seen —
we may not see these particular things come to pass, but cer
tain it is that we shall see big things of some sort come to
pass."

In the light of present events, the story would seem to
have been more than roughly prophetic ; and the end, may
hap, is not yet.

The phrase "well-balanced radicals" came to be a pet
aversion of Jack's for the rest of his life. For, outside of
the capitalist class, it was the self -named "well-balanced
radicals," who would have none of his "Iron Heel."

Yet it was one of these, after Jack London 's death, who
wrote me: "The earlier portion of the book is the most
impressive, the most unanswerable impeachment of the
capitalist system to be found in all the voluminous socio
logical literature of our times. I have read many severe
criticisms of capitalist procedure, but this cuts deeper and
cleaner than they all."

4 ' The Iron Heel, ' ' once finished and started on its round
of the magazines, Jack's next contemplated book was a
group of tramping episodes, brought out serially as "My
Life in the Underworld, ' ' and, in book-form, ' ' The Road. ' '

Two paragraphs from Jack's letters to George Sterling,

140 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

of dates February 17, 1908, and March 3, 1909, throw
illumination upon his open attitude toward his past :

"I can't get a line on why you wish I hadn't written 'The
Boad,' " he challenges. "It is all true. It is what I am,
what I have done, and it is part of the process by which
I have become. Is it a lingering taint of the bourgeois in
you that makes you object? Is it because of my shameless-
ness! For having done things in which I saw or see no
shame! Do tell me."

And this :

"Your point about 'The Boad,' namely that it 'gave the
mob a mop to bang' me with. What of it! I don't care
for the mob. It can't hurt me. One word of censure or
disapproval from you would hurt me a few million myriads
of billions times more than all the sum total the mob would
inflict on me in one hundred and forty-seven lifetimes. I
thank the Lord I don't live for the mob."

This seems the place to point Jack's intolerance of
restricted or anachronistic vision, by quoting further from
letters to Sterling. The latter sat between the horns of
a dilemma with regard to his two closest friends — Jack
London and Ambrose Bierce, who were as far apart as
the poles in their philosophies. Because Jack had experi
enced certain phases of living which were untenable to the
satirist's niceties, the latter seemed entirely to discount the
younger author as one entitled to consideration in the
brotherhood of polite society. In short, after he had read
"The Eoad," Mr. Bierce was emphatic in his opinion con
cerning what summary disposal should be made of Jack.
But Jack, with a generosity and lack of bitterness which
would have well become the elder man, wrote Sterling :

"For heaven's sake don't you quarrel with Ambrose
about me. He's too splendid a man to be diminished be
cause he has lacked access to a later generation of science.
He crystallized before you and I were born, and it is too
magnificent a crystallization to quarrel with."

RETURN TO OAKLAND; EARTHQUAKE 141

Earlier letters to Sterling amplify Jack's contention,
and his own up-to-the-mark step with the marching world :

"If Hillquit and Hunter didn't put it all over Bierce — I'll
quit thinking at all. Bierce 's clever pessimism was no
where against their science. He proved himself rudderless,
compassless, and chartless. Bierce doesn't shine in a face
to face battle with socialists. He 's beat at long range sling
ing ink. He was groggy at the drop of the hat, and before
they got done with him was looking anxiously around and
wondering why the gong didn't ring. All he did was to
back and fill and potter around, dogmatize and contradict
himself. When they cornered him, he went off on another
tack, wherefore they'd overtake him and lambaste him
again. Bierce, with biological and sociological concepts
that crystallized in the fervant heat of pessimism a genera
tion ago, was — well, pathetic. And more pathetic still, he
doesn 't know it. ' '

"I wouldn't care to lock horns with Bierce," is a later
reference. "He stopped growing a generation ago. Of
course, he keeps up with the newspapers, but his criteria
crystallized 30 odd years ago. Had he been born a genera
tion later he'd have been a socialist, and, more likely, an
anarchist. He never reads books that aren't something like
a hundred years old, and he glories in the fact ! ' '

The latest remarks I find, in the same correspondence,
are these written from Hilo, Hawaii, in July of 1907 :

' ' The quotes from Ambrose were great. What a pen he
wields. Too bad he hasn't a better philosophic founda
tion. "

CHAPTER XXX

SNARK VOYAGE
End 1906; 1907-8-9

THE Great Earthquake proved very expensive to Jack
London. Primarily because of it, the yacht-building,
which he had calculated would cost seven thousand dollars,
or at most ten, incredibly squandered some thirty thousand.
The iron keel was to have been run on the very evening of
the Earthquake, April 18. Following that event (which we
of California are averse to term an " Act of God, " much less
one of a beneficent Providence), what Jack should have
done, too late he came to see, was to look around for a ready-
built hull. At almost any time before the World War, fine
deep-water yachts could be picked up on the Atlantic sea
board at a tithe of their original cost. In future years, after
the abandonment of our voyage, Jack pored over many a
blue-print received from agents in the east, of well-ap
pointed vessels that could be had for mere songs.

No man born of woman could forecast the insur
mountable anarchy that the post-quake and fire-havoc
wrought in building conditions. I shall leave it to the
reader to guess at the inwardness of our spirit-trial, so
lightly sketched in the first article ("The Inconceivable and
Monstrous ") of the nineteen, including Foreward and Back-
word, that compose Jack London's "The Cruise of the
Snark." This collection relates, in more or less discon
nected fashion, a few of the main happenings and observa
tions incident to the cruise. My own book, I wish to mention
here, "The Log of the Snark," also published by The Mac-
millan Company, gives, as its name implies, the consecutive

142

SNARK VOYAGE 143

journal from the day before we sailed from San Francisco
until we returned to California. There is one exception to
the foregoing statement. My two-years' diary being too
protracted for one volume, the five-months' experiences
ashore in the Hawaiian Islands, together with the general
details of our 1915 and 1916 visits, form a bulky book by
themselves, which also appears under the Macmillan im
print. This volume I have revised and brought up to date
for a new edition in 1921. Jack, aside from his incomplete
Snark record, as above, devoted himself to fiction, which I
name below, inspired by the Pacific and its enchanting isles,
irrespective of other books in which incidents from his South
Sea lore appear, such as "Michael Brother of Jerry, "
" Martin Eden," "The Bed One," and others. Here are
the strictly tropical ones :

"Adventure," novel, 1911.

"South Sea Tales, "1911.

"The House of Pride," 1912.

"A Son of the Sun, "1912.

"Jerry of the Islands," 1918.

The opening adjuration in "The Inconceivable and
Monstrous ' ' sounds the note adhered to by Jack throughout
the construction and manning of the little ship that was,
we fondly believed, to be our home for indefinite years of
adventure. "Spare no expense" was the slogan he im
pressed upon his lieutenant, Roscoe. And no matter what
exasperation followed, "gipsy heart to gipsy heart," un
daunted Jack and I traced our route upon a sizable world-
globe bought for our future library.

In the end, allowing for all the heartbreaking wastage
and plain graft that sent the yacht, half a year late, an un
finished, internal wreck upon the high seas to Honolulu,
still was she, with her sturdy sticks and her ribs of oak,
pronounced by that master-small-boat-sailor, Jack London,
the strongest vessel of her proportions ever launched —

144 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"Stronger, even, I tell you," he held, "than the Goya, that
made the Northwest Passage. "

Be it known, once and for all, this point having been
airily misrepresented for years, that every human being of
the Snark's complement of seven, except Jack London and
myself, who worked to pay them — every soul, I say, was
drawing a salary for work performed or unperformed dur
ing that crazy traverse of 2200 miles to Honolulu. From
every class of society over the wide world we thought to cir
cumnavigate — doctors, lawyers, beggarmen, chiefs, thieves,
multimillionaires, sailors single and in crews, poets, his
torians, geologists, painters, doctors of divinity — in short,
men, women and children of every color and occupation,
wrote or telegraphed or paid us calls, imploring to sail on
any terms, or none. They even appealed for the privilege
of paying lavishly for the privilege. One there was who
wrote: "I can assure you that I am eminently respectable,
but find other respectable people tiresome. " Since he ex
pressed an overwhelming desire to be of our party, we
could not but wonder exactly what he meant !

But Jack was no fool. Whosoever joined the Snark
should do so upon a stated salary, and there could be no re
criminations. Inconceivably and monstrously, there were
recriminations, despite the precautionary measures. When
all but one of our first company returned to San Fran
cisco before we had left Hawaii for the equator, the menda
cious papers flashed reports that there had been violence fol
lowing disagreements during the first lap of the cruise. Jack
London his own Sea Wolf, was the implication, of course;
and what could Jack do but grind his teeth, and then laugh :
"They can all go to blazes! You and I know better; and
what really counts is you and me ! ' '

Disagreements there had been — but I employ the wrong
word; for it was an agreement, quietly arrived at between
Jack and his sailing master before Honolulu was sighted,
that the latter should go home at his leisure from that port.

FROM RIGHT TO LEFT— JACK LONDON, LUTHER BURBANK (Plant
Wizard), PROFESSOR EIKiAR LUOIEN LARKIN (Astronomer)

1900. JATK ON THE WAY TO LUTHER BTTRBANK'S

SNARK VOYAGE 145

A younger member of the party decided to return to college ;
while our Japanese cabin boy, Tochigi, failed to conquer an
incorrigible seasickness. So these two, also, went back to
California.

It all boils down to the fact, well-established in Jack's
mind and my own from our incredulous observations of
lack of discipline and neglect of property — "appalled and
bewildered " my diary states our emotions — that those who
deserted the Snark merely discovered they had been mis
taken in thinking sea-adventure was what their natures
craved. The details of certain unfairness to Jack that
were so blindly practised, I omit. However inclined to
garrulousness I may be on Jack's behalf, I do want to be
fair enough to all of them in their blindness, largely to
lay the blame, as already hinted, to the chaotic circum
stances under which the boat was built. This, in the last
analysis, had worn out the patience, the grit, and the in
dubitably feeble adventure-lust that had been the reason
for their engaging in the enterprise.

I think the difference between them and ourselves was
that Jack and I knew what we wanted, and in unison over
took it in spite of colossal odds from all sides; while the
others simply had mistaken their desires. The secret of
finding our rainbows' ends always, I am sure, lay first
and last in our knowledge of what we wanted. The longest
search never palled, because the search was an end in
itself. Of one of our men, who had failed to fill even
the berth of a preceding failure, Jack said: "He caught a
glimpse, in some metallic, cog-like way, of the spirit of
Adventure, and he thought to woo her — Adventure, who
must be served whole-souled and single-hearted and with
the long patience that is so terrible that very few are capable
of it."

But I am ahead of my narrative :

Early in the year, with the framework of the yacht just
begun, Jack had written to a magazine the letter given be-

146 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

low, outlining the purposed voyage and offering a chance
at the story of the cruise.

Here let me remark that a leading reason for the in
clusion of this correspondence is to emphasize the exact
proposition which Jack London made. This, in turn, be
cause, following his death, one journalist, in an otherwise
gracious and well-meaning article, created, unintentionally
I wish to believe, a misapprehension in the minds of his
many readers as to happenings in connection with the ar
rangement for the boat-articles. During a call with which
this writer honored the Jack London Ranch after Jack's
passing, I threatened that I should, in all friendliness, go
after him in the open when I should write this book ; and he,
with entire good-nature, gave me his blessing to "go to it
and do the worst."

Here is the opening letter. The italics are mine, guided
by marginal markings of Jack's:

"Feb. 18/06.
"Dear :

' ' The keel is laid. The boat is to be 45 feet long. It would
have been a little bit shorter had I not found it impossible
to squeeze in a bathroom otherwise. I sail in October.
Hawaii is the first port of call; and from there we shall
wander through the South Seas, Samoa, Tasmania, New
Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, and up through the Philip
pines to Japan. Then Korea and China, and on down to
India, Bed Sea, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic, and
on across the Atlantic to New York, and then around the
Horn to San Francisco. ... I shall certainly put in a win
ter in St. Petersburg, and the chances are that I shall go up
the Danube from the Black Sea to Vienna, and there isn't
a European country in which I shall not spend from one to
several months. This leisurely fashion will obtain through
out the whole trip. I shall not be in a rush ; in fact, I calcu
late seven (7) years at least will be taken up by the trip.

1 ' This boat is to be sailed by one friend and myself. There

SNAEK VOYAGE 147

are no sailors. My wife accompanies me. Of course, I'll
take a cook along, and a cabin boy ; but these will be Asiatics,
and will have no part in the sailorizing. [The ultimate per
sonnel of the crew was rearranged.] The rig of the boat
will be a compromise between a yawl and a schooner. It
will be what is called the ketch-rig — the same rig that is used
by the English fishing-boats on the Dogger Bank.

' 'Shall, however, have a small engine on board to be used
only in case of emergency, such as in bad water among reefs
and shoals, where a sudden calm in a fast current leaves a
sailing-boat helpless. Also, this engine is to be used for an
other purpose. When I strike a country, say Egypt or
France, I'll go up the Nile or the Seine by having the mast
taken out, and under power of the engine. I shall do this a
great deal in the different countries, travel inland and live
on board the boat at the same time. There is no reason at
all why I shouldn't in this fashion come up to Paris, and
moor alongside the Latin Quarter, with a bow-line out to
Notre Dame and a stern-line fast to the Morgue.

' 'Now to business. I shall be gone a long time on this
trip. No magazine can print all I have to write about it.
On the other hand, it cannot be imagined that I shall write
50,000 words on the whole seven years, and then quit. As it
is, the subject matter of the trip divides itself up so that
there will be no clash whatever between any several publi
cations that may be handling my stuff. For instance, here
are three big natural, unconflicting divisions: news, indus
trial, and political articles on the various countries for
newspapers; fiction; and finally, the trip itself.

"Now the question arises, if you take the trip itself

(which will be the cream), how much space will The

be able to give me! In this connection I may state that
McClure's and Outing are after me; and, as I am throwing
my life, seven years of my time, my earning-power as a
writer of fiction, and a lot of money, into the enterprise, it
behooves me to keep a sharp lookout on how expenses, etc.,

148 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

are to be met. And one important factor in this connection
that I must consider, is that of space.

"And while I am on this matter of space, I may as well
say that it is granted, always, that I deliver the goods. Of
course, if my articles turn out to be mushy and inane,
why I should not expect any magazine to continue publish
ing them. I believe too much in fair play to be a good busi
ness man, and if my work be rotten, I'd be the last fellow in
the world to bind any editor to publish it. On the other
hand, I have a tremendous confidence, based upon all kinds
of work I have already done, that I can deliver the goods.
Anybody doubting this has but to read "The People of the
Abyss" to find the graphic, reportorial way I have of
handling things. . . .

"While on this matter of space, I may also state that it
is not so much the point of how large the space is in a given
number of magazine, but how long a time the story of the
trip can run in the magazine. ' '

Here he inserts a paragraph concerning his abilities to
furnish good photographic illustrations. And he goes on:

"... We expect lots of action, and my strong point as
a writer is that I am a writer of action — see all my short
stories, for instance. Another point is, that while I am a
writer, I am also a sailor . . . ; and a still further point is,
that I am an acknowledged and successful writer of sea-
matter; see 'The Sea Wolf,' 'The Cruise of the Dazzler,'
and 'Stories of the Fish Patrol. . . .'

"... Now comes the item of pay. In the first place,
here is a traveler-correspondent, and traveler-correspond
ents are usually expensive, because their traveling expenses
are paid by their employers. But in my case I'd pay my own
traveling expenses. I build my boat, I outfit my boat, and
I run my boat. . . . So, in whatever conclusion we arrive at,
it must be stipulated that I receive in advance, in the course
of the building of the boat, say $3000.00."

The editor stated his willingness to make the advance;

SNAEK VOYAGE 149

and Jack shot back, "All right. We sail October 1," end
ing the letter, "I'm going to turn out some cracker jack
stuff on this trip ! ' '

April 3, 1906, is the date of Jack's agreement to "furn
ish The Magazine a series of exclusive articles de
scriptive of my voyage in my sailboat, which voyage is to
extend, if possible, around the world." The number of
contributions, he stipulated, was not to exceed ten unless
more were ordered. Jack agreed to supply photographs.

Meanwhile, he had got under way a proposal to furnish
land-articles, say upon domestic customs of native peoples,
for a woman's magazine in the east — this in line with re
marks which I have underscored in letter above quoted.

Came the Earthquake, and on May 16, he wrote : "You
ask for my picture alongside the hull. There ain't no hull.
The iron keel, wooden keel, and stem and a few ribs, are
standing, and so they have been standing for some time. I
have not been near the boat yet, and do not expect to go until
it is practically finished. I am too busy." When the build
ing had been resumed, Jack put my uncle, who had been for
himself an enthusiastic boat-builder in his time, and was to
be sailing-master, upon a salary to superintend the con
struction.

In July I find this from Jack to the first magazine :

"You will have to defer my opening article until the
November number. I have finally succumbed to the Cali
fornia earthquake. I find it impossible to get a decent en
gine this side of New York, and the consequent delay throws
me back a full month. I shall sail November 1, instead of
October 1." Later he wrote: "This damned earthquake
is just beginning to show up the delays it caused. There
is scarcely a thing we want that we can buy in the local
market." Then, "We are going to call her the Snark,"
he announced his final choice of a name for the "beautiful
elliptical stern." His reason was that he could think of no
other name that suited, and his friends, with bright sug-

150 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

gestions of "The Call of the Wild," "The Sea Wolf" and
eke "The Game," had worn him out. He even put it as a
threat to one and all, that if nothing less silly were forthcom
ing, Snark she should be — this snappy title being chosen
from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark."

"I never thought about naming the boat after your
magazine," he replied to the editor's suggestion. "The
only objection to that name is, that boats, like horses and
dogs, should have names of one syllable. Good, sharp,
strong names, that can never be misheard. There's only
one thing that would make me change the name Snark to
that of your magazine, namely, the presentation of the
Snark to me as an out-and-out present. She is costing me
$10,000, and by golly, it would be worth $10,000 worth of ad
vertising to the magazine. In return for such a present,"
(and I can hear Jack's titter as he dictated the outrage
to me), "not only would I put up with the five-syllable
name, but l Magazine' to be appended. That would make
eight syllables. Why, I'd even take subscriptions and
advertisements for the magazine as I went along!"

In September the editor was succeeded by another, and
I find an amusing item in his first letter to Jack: "The
correction you ask to be made has been attended to and you
may rest easy in the assurance that 'Eoscoe' will not be
misrepresented but will be placed in his true light as a
1 follower of the science, though not the religion, of one
Cyrus R. Teed.' " For our sailing-master, be it known,
firmly believed in the Teed ' ' cellular cosmogany, ' ' and that
he was to experience the Snark voyage on the inner skin of
the planet.

Glancing over these letters, I discover that Jack had
raised his fiction rate to fifteen cents a word to the maga
zines, and his story, "Just Meat," (book published in
"When God Laughs"), was being discussed on this basis.

There fell more trouble. The editors of the two maga
zines each tried to "grab the whole show" in their advance

SNAEK VOYAGE 151

advertising of their totally different Snark material, and
Jack, indignant with both for accusing him of bad faith,
entirely clear in his own head and in his two uncon-
flicting contracts, was made the sufferer. His retaliation is
in plain and uncompromising terms. After treating the
first editor to a few of his opinions of magazine offices, he
quotes verbatim from his contract with the woman's maga
zine: " These articles are to be upon home life and social
conditions in a broad sense of the term, etc., etc."

' ' Speaking now in connection with contents of foregoing
paragraph, " he enlarges, "I want to know what in hell you
think 35,000 words will cover ! Do you think 35,000 words
will cover a tithe of the boat-trip itself, much less all the
things I expect to do and see in the course of seven years !
. . . Don't you think I've got a kick coming for the way
you have advertised me as going around the world for The

1 . . . hell, everybody thinks you are building my

boat for me, and paying all my expenses, and giving me a
princely salary on top of it ... 35,000 words at 10 cents a
word means $3500.00 and the initial cost of my boat is run
ning past the $12,000.00 mark, to say nothing of expenses
of running said boat. . . . Those are the figures up to date,
and they're still going up. San Francisco is mad. Prices
have climbed out of sight. I pay $200 for a bit of iron work
on the boat, that should cost $40.00. Everything is in this
order. The outlook is now, that I shall not sail before
January. Weeks go by without a tap of work being done on
the boat. Can't get the men. All my stuff is coming from
the east because the earthquake destroyed the local market ;
and freight is congested."

On November 1, 1906, Jack wrote again: "Yes, Mr.

[the new editor's predecessor] did write me upon

the matter of ' distributing my cabbages in several baskets, '
and I must confess that he got me rather hot in the collar,
what of the sized-basket he had furnished me and thought
would hold all my cabbages — the crop of seven years in a

152 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

35,000-word basket ! I am inclosing you a copy of the letter
I sent him. . . . Since writing this, I wrote him another

calling the turn on him for doing just what Mr. [the

editor of the woman's magazine] had done, namely, claim
ing everything in sight so far as my seven-years ' voyage is
concerned. Your periodical said that practically my total
output would go to it, concerning lands, people, etc., that I
would see. The mental processes of editors are beyond me.

I fought with Mr. for 35,000 words, and couldn't

get it out of him. ' '

When the Christmas number of the magazine that was to
have the story of the voyage came out, containing the first
of his boat-articles, Jack let loose his "long wolf-howl"
upon the liberties that had been taken with his copy. " Any
tyro can cut a manuscript," he storms, "and feel that he is a
co-creator with the author. But it's hell on the author.
Not one man in a million, including office-boys, is to be
found in the magazine office who is able properly to revise
by elimination the work of a professional author. And the
men in your office have certainly played ducks and drakes
with the exposition in the first half of my first boat-article.
. . . For instance, I have just finished the proofs of 'Just
Meat. ' In one place I have my burglar say, 'I put the kibosh
on his time.' Some man in your office changed this to, 'I
put a crimp in his time.' In the first place, ' crimp' is in
correct in such usage. In the second place, there is nothing
whatever in the connotation of 'kibosh' that would prevent
its appearing in the pages of your magazine. 'Kibosh' is
not vulgar, it is not obscene. Such action is wholly unwar
ranted and gratitously officious. Did this co-creator of mine,
in your office, think that he knew what he was doing when
he made such a ridiculous substitution? And if he does
think so, why in the dickens doesn't he get in and do the
whole thing himself?

"In our contract," he grows hot and hotter, "I take
your right of revision to consist in rejecting an article as

SNABK VOYAGE 153

a whole or in eliminating objectionable phrases. Now I
have no objection to that. I have no objection to your truck
ling to Mrs. Grundy, when, for instance, you cut out swear
words or change 'go to hell' to 'go to blazes. ' That's the
mere shell. In that sort of revision you can have full
swing; but that is different matter from cutting the heart
out of my work, such as you did in my first boat-article.
You made my exposition look like thirty cents.

"I WEAVE my stuff; you can cut out a whole piece of
it, but you can't cut out parts of it, and leave mutilated
parts behind. Just think of it. Wading into my exposition
and cutting out premises or proofs or anything else just to
suit your length of an article, or the space, rather, that you
see fit to give such article. [The editors were succeeding
each other rapidly about this time, and Jack was quite in
the dark as to whom, personally, he was addressing.] . . .
' * Don 't you see my point f " he urges. ' * If the whole woven
thing — event, narrative, description — is not suitable for
your magazine, why cut it out — cut out the whole thing. I
don't care. But I refuse to contemplate for one moment
that there is any man in your office, or in the office of any
magazine, capable of bettering my art, or the art of any
other first-class professional writer.

"Now, I want to give warning right here : I won't stand
for it. Before I stand for it, I'll throw over the whole
proposition. If you dare to do this with my succeeding
articles. ... I'll not send you another line. By golly,
you've got to give me a square deal in this matter. Do you
think for one moment that I'll write my heart (my skilled,
professional heart, if you please) into my work to have
you fellows slaughtering it to suit your journalistic tastes?
Either I'm going to write this set of articles, or you're go
ing to write it, for know right here that I refuse definitely
and flatly, to collaborate with you or with any one in your
office.

"In order that this letter may not go astray, " he winds

154 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

up, "I am sending copies to each of the three men who, in
my present hypothesis, I think may possibly be editor . . .
And I want, at your earliest convenience, an assurance that
the sort of mutilation I am complaining about, will not occur
again."

After an unsatisfactory reply, Jack wrote: "Frankly,
I'd like to call the whole thing off," following this with a
still warmer letter than his former one, impressing upon
the editor, "This is the first squabble I ever had in my
life with a magazine. I hope it will be my last, but I'll
make it hum while it lasts. ' '

The upshot of the "squabble" was that the boat articles
were actually called off, another serial, already under way,
to be submitted at a still better rate. Jack was well pleased,
and I was relieved for his sake, as the unsettled state of
matters both with regard to his work and the exasperating
Snark progress was very grilling to his nerves.

Another disappointment we had sustained was the loss
of Manyoungi. For weeks, with true oriental indirection,
he had set about making himself dispensable. The only
motive, Jack convinced himself, was that the boy harbored
a disinclination to visit the Seven Seas in an inconsequential
shallop such as to him appeared the small Snark on her
rickety ways at the shipyard. The heart of the sailor was
not in his breast. His misbehavior, which had extended into
every department of his service, culminated one evening
in a very ludicrous manner. He had all day blatantly
omitted his habitual address of "Master," substituting
"Mr. London," or "Boss," with labored variations. His
bold black eyes and studiedly nonchalant tongue advertised
bid upon bid for discharge. And still new titles fell from
his foolish lips, and still "Master" looked up when they be
came especially if unintentionally funny, and grinned at the
silly boy, though one could note a peculiar absence of expres
sion in Jack's gray eyes. For he was sad to lose Manyoungi,
and in such undignified fashion — the perfect servant in so

SNAEK VOYAGE 155

many capacities, of whom we were both personally fond
into the bargain.

It was the custom each night, when we played our night
cap game of cards, for Manyoungi to ask what we would
have to drink — grape-juice, or ginger-ale, lemonade, or beer.
On this evening I was bending apprehensively over the crib-
bage-board, watching my opponent peg a shocking advan
tage, when an ominously quiet but impudent voice behind
me asked:

"Will God have some beer?"

The only muscles I moved were in raising my eyes to
Jack's face. I was braced for anything; words and tone
were an invitation to wipe up the floor with Manyoungi 's
offending countenance. Jack went pale with surprise ; but
his sense of humor prevented him from thrashing the
Korean, as man to man. He was not even angry, properly
speaking, and I relaxed when, controlling the desire to laugh,
he said composedly:

i ' I do not want anything at all from you, Manyoungi, ' '
and dealt another hand.

It meant the breaking of a new man to all the details of
our complicated requirements, not only in relation to our
present life, but to the prospective one upon the water.
Tochigi, a poet-browed Japanese, later to become an or
dained minister in the Episcopal clergy, came to fill the
vacancy; and each day's lunch-table was a thing of artistic
anticipation, for never did the same exquisite floral decora
tion appear twice.

Jack forever maintained that there never could be
equaled Manyoungi 's perfect "spirit of service" that ani
mated his manifold accomplishments. ' ' Why, that boy could
make both Charmian and me ready in half an hour for Tim-
buctoo ! " he would praise. And it was not far from the fact.

In a letter to Cloudesley Johns, written in September, is
a lovely attestation of Jack London's inner contentment
as regarded the voyage :

156 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"Nay, I'll not come back in 18 months. Barring boat and
financial shipwreck, shall be gone for at least seven years. Also,
shall not 'come back young again/ I am long since 'young again.'
You ought to see me, and you ought to have seen me all this
year at Glen Ellen."

Curiously enough, eighteen months was practically the
extent of our actual residence on the Snark, although we
were absent twenty-seven months altogether.

In early November, hoping soon to weigh anchor, we
moved to Oakland, with Mammy Jennie and Tochigi to keep
house. That month, Jack wrote Cloudesley :

" Sorrier than the devil; but can't make Los Angeles before I
sail. And when I sail, I'm going to hit the high places for mid
ocean in order to learn navigation and learn the boat where I've
plenty of room. No rockbound coast for me as a starter. A
thousand miles of offing isn 't any too good for me as a starter. . . .
Dec. 15th is sailing date."

The first week in December saw the completion of ' ' The
Iron Heel," begun in August, and Jack bent his efforts upon
the tramp series. That done, too restless to concentrate
upon another long stretch, he wrote the stories: "Goliah"
(in "Revolution"), "The Passing of Marcus O'Brien (in
"Lost Face"), "The Unparalleled Invasion" (published
in "The Strength of the Strong," and interesting in view
of the alleged methods during the Great War), "The
Enemy of All the World" and "The Dream of Debs" (both
in "The Strength of the Strong"), and "A Curious Frag
ment" (in "When God Laughs").

For recreation, the living-room echoed to exciting con
tests in poker or hearts, among the players and onlookers
being George Sterling, Henry Lafler, Carlton Bierce, Rich
ard Partington, Rob Royce, Porter Garnett, Nora May
French, and the Lily Maid, with a host of others. Upon one
of these occasions, the first part of December, while we
wives of "the boys" were entertaining ourselves at my new
ly acquired Steinway "B" grand, there arrived, from Kan-

SNAEK VOYAGE 157

sas, in a drenching southeaster, Martin Johnson, who was
destined to be the only unshaken unit in the Snark's crew.
After partially drying himself, he sat in at the game of
hearts.

There were Sunday foregatherings with what was left
of the old " Crowd'- in Piedmont; Kugby at the Univer
sity of California, and concerts in its Greek Theater; plays
and concerts at the Macdonough Theater or the Bishop
Playhouse; gay dinner-parties at the Oakland Eestaurants
— The Forum, The Saddle Rock, and Pabst Cafe. Jack con
sumed many ' ' ten-minute " wild ducks, canvasback, mallard,
teal, washed down with his favorite wine, imported Lieb-
fraumilch, in the tall opaline glasses he loved. For he, who
"bothered" so little what he put in his stomach, was devoted
to this type of game, excessively rare and accompanied by
potatoes au gratm; and the fact that he had not missed the
open season was somewhat of a solace for the almost in
supportable delay in Snark affairs.

We made up frequent swimming parties for the Pied
mont indoor tank; and once or twice, roved the town on
rented saddlers, taking photographs of all that were left
standing of Jack's many homes that had been. We boxed
regularly at the house on Twenty-seventh Street, rather to
the disapproval of Jack's mother, who remained silent until
one day I drove my retreating opponent, beaten by his own
mirth at my ferocity, into the dining-room door, cracking
the redwood panel. Prizefights took Jack to the West Oak
land Athletic Club, as before mentioned; and, when the
Snark, after once breaking the inadequate ways, had been
finally launched in San Francisco and brought to East Oak
land for completion, there were steamed-mussel dinners
aboard in the unfinished cabin.

I learned to ride a wheel, good horses being unob
tainable, and also that I might participate with Jack in
another of his old hobbies; so he bought me a "bike," and
was loud in his boast that with three hours ' practice I was

158 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

able, without mishap, to ride clear to East Oakland to in
spect progress on the yacht.

We took our work to Carmel-by-the-sea, and visited the
Sterlings for a fortnight; and a journey in mid-winter was
made into Nevada, to Tonopah and Goldfield — in which
latter mining-town we were guests of Mr. and Mrs. Janu
ary Jones, who showed us everything our time permitted,
above the ground, and many hundreds of feet beneath the
surface, by means of the precarious rim of an iron bucket.
We returned to California by way of Rhyolite and Bullfrog,
booming gold-centers, and had a never-to-be-forgotten
glimpse into Death Valley; then Los Angeles, and home
again. This trip was succeeded by one to Stanford Uni
versity, where Jack lectured upon Socialism. We were met
by three " clean, noble, and alive " students, Ferguson, Tut-
tle and Wentz. Jack was entertained by the Delta Upsilon
Fraternity; and I by the Alpha Phi Sorority.

There was a Euskin Club dinner on February 1, which
Jack addressed upon the subject of "Incentive." Like a
red scarf to a bull was to Jack the stock argument so often
advanced, that without material gain there would be no
incentive to good deeds. His speech, which I have in man
uscript, is too long to quote entire; but the opening chal
lenges are enough to indicate what follows:

"Does a child compete in a spelling match for material
gain?

"Do the boys wrestling or racing in the schoolyard
compete for material gain?

' ' Do sailors at sea volunteer to launch a boat in a moun
tainous sea to rescue shipwrecked strangers for material
gain?

"Did Lincoln toil with his statecraft for material gain?

"Are you here to-night for material gain?

"Do the professors in all the universities toil for mate
rial gain? — you know their average salary is less than that
of skilled laborers.

SNARK VOYAGE 159

"Do the scientists in their laboratories work for mate
rial gain?

* ' Did men like Spencer, Darwin, Newton, work for mate
rial gain?

"Did the half million soldiers in the Civil War endure
hardships, mangling, and violent death for the material gain
of thirteen dollars per month?

"And is there any incentive of material gain in the love
of mothers for their children in all the world? — and re
member that the mothers constitute half of all the world.

1 'In short, have I not mentioned incentives, that are not
alone higher than the incentive of material gain, but that
dominate the incentive of material gain — and that also com
pel to action multitudes of people, in fact, all the people
of the world?

* * Can you not conceive that mere material gain, a once
, useful device for the development of the human, has not ful
filled its function and is ready to be cast aside into the scrap-
heap of rudimentary organs and ideas, such as gills in the
throat and belief in the divine right of kings?"

These latter months of waiting, Jack was up and down
in his temperament, and more or less continually depressed.
So much so, at intervals, that for once it was I who said
to myself: "Thank heaven I don't have to live in a city
always!" Even Oakland, suburb of the greater town
across the Bay, had a bad effect upon him. But at last the
trial-trip of the Snark was heralded for February 10, and
upon the breathing swell, ten miles out to sea, the saucy, if
grimy, little hull bore under sail and gasolene. Our spirits
soared ; and Jack, where we sat together in the bows for an
hour, said to me :

"And we're going around the world together in her, you
and I, Mate Woman. ..."

He presented me with "The Cruise of the Dazzler," and
in it wrote: "And soon we sail on our own cruise. 'The

160 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Cruise of the Snark' — and we shall be mates around the
whole round world. "

So loved we our adventure, that of mornings we often ex
changed overnight dreams of boat and voyage. Then, un
able, on account of further ' ' inconceivable and monstrous "
excuses, to get away until April, once we went home to Glen
Ellen. Snow was on the mountain, and we rode to the top,
Selim and Belle, pasture-fat, sniffing suspiciously at the
white earth. And we heard, to our lasting sorrow, how
Brown Wolf, whose prophetic eyes and ways had wrung our
hearts while preparations were afoot for the Long Separa
tion, had died, alone and in the snow of his birthing, a week
after we had left in November. No one had plucked up the
courage to tell us. " After that first snow had all melted,"
Wiget said, 1 1 one day I saw something up the hill among the
trees above my house ; and when I went up, there was your
dog, dead among the leaves, with snow still on his fur."

Dear Brown Wolf ! It seemed hard indeed that he should
have had his bleak heart wrenched so cruelly twice in his old
age. Eeminiscences were often upon Jack's lips : "Do you
remember, Mate," he would say, "the day we started out
for the afternoon on Belle and poor Ban, and Brown Wolf
picked up a big juicy porterhouse some one had dropped,
and nearly died because he couldn't decide between the beef
steak and the run with us? The red meat won out — he
knew we would come back. But nothing could change his
foreboding when we got ready for the Snark. . . . Funny
about dogs : sometimes, as in his case, even before the travel
ing-gear is brought out they seem to sense what is coming
to them."

The dismantled Jack's House and Annex did not affect
us cheerfully ; and after a last ride to the Ranch, to see the
completed stone and tile barn by moonlight, we bade final
farewell to Wake Eobin.

On the last night of the year, after wild funning with a
chance party of acquaintances in the uproarious cafes and

1908. JACK AND CHAKMIAN LONDON IN SOLOMON
ISLANDS

SNARK VOYAGE 161

confetti-showered streets of Oakland, which had gained
enormously in population after the great fire across the
water, I closed my 1906 diary with these words :

"And so ends the happiest year of my life, with before
us a great adventure "

CHAPTER XXXI

THE "SNARK" VOYAGE; TRAMP COLLIER "TYMERIC" VOYAGE;
ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME

1907-8-9

OUR friends cannot understand why we make this voy
age/' Jack elucidates his and my "I like," which, he
always contended, is the ultimate, obvious reason for all
human decision. "They shudder, and moan, and raise
their hands,'7 somewhat, he might have added, as did the
Lily Maid's mother upon his departure for Alaska. "No
amount of explanation can make them comprehend that we
are moving along the line of least resistance; that it is
easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to
remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain
on dry land than to go down to the sea in the small ship. . . .
They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that
their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody
else 's line of least resistance. . . . They think I am crazy.
In return, I am sympathetic. . . . The things I like con
stitute my set of values. The thing I like most of all is per
sonal achievement — not achievement for the world's ap
plause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the old
4 1 did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it !' But per
sonal achievement, with me, must be concrete. I'd rather
win a water-fight in the swimming-pool, or remain astride a
horse that is trying to get out from under me, than write
the great American novel . . . Some other fellow would
prefer writing the great American novel . . . That is why
I am building the Snark ... I am so made. I like it, that
is all. The trip around the world means big moments of

162

ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME 163

living . . . Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here
are the seas, the winds, and the waves of all the world . . .
Here is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is
delight to the small quivering vanity that is I ... It is my
own particular form of vanity, that it all. ' '

"The ultimate word," he says elsewhere, "is I LIKE.
It lies beneath philosophy and is twined about the heart of
life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for a
month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual
says in an instant I LIKE — and does something else and
philosophy goes glimmering. Philosophy is very often a
man's way of explaining his own I LIKE."

To resume: "There is also another side to the voyage
of the Snark. Being alive, I want to see, and all the world
is a bigger thing to see than one small town or valley."
At the end of the voyage, he wrote :

"The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the Snark
and paid for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write 35,000
words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to pay
me the same rate I received for stories written at home. Promptly
the magazine advertised that it was sending me especially around
the world for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every man
who had business dealings with the Snark charged three prices
because forsooth the magazine could afford it. Down in the utter
most South Sea isle this myth obtained, and I paid accordingly.
To this day everybody believes that the magazine paid for every
thing and that I made a fortune out of the voyage. It is hard, after
such advertising, to hammer it into the human understanding that
the whole voyage was done for the fun of it. ' '

The Snark exploit, so far as it lasted, was all and more
to Jack London and to me than we had anticipated. Some
feminine journalist, after reading my "Log," described the
cruise as "a disappointment — nothing but a disappoint
ment. ' ' It would have been — to her, who did not care to go
down to the sea in ships, or having gone down to the sea in
ships, dwelt only upon the little annoyances that enter sea-

164 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

living as well as land-living. But I, with a firm philosophy
that it is the Big Things which count, and with the memory
of my Strong Traveler beside me, ask that no one shall en
tertain the opinion that it was not the most wonderful, vic
torious thing which ever happened to the right man and wo
man. What we set out to attain — the " purple passages, "
the glamor of Romance, the sheer emancipation from any
possible boredom or commonplaceness of memory forever
and forever, and, before everything, increased love and
camaraderie between us two — became ours in unstinted
measure.

One reporter, previously to our sailing, said: "When
Jack London talks of his purposed voyage, he is all boy, all
enthusiasm." So he appeared. But I, accustomed to
look beneath the surface phenomena of him, realized
throughout my life at his side that no matter how sincere
his enthusiasms, the keen edge had been rubbed from ad
venture by pre-adventure, if I may coin a word — the super-
adventure of a too-early manhood. So, in his successful
maturity, when he came to undertake, with all the zest in
him, the conquest of dreams he had failed to capture in
youth — like say exploring Typee Valley, or letting go anchor
in uncharted bights of cannibal isles — it was with a differ
ence which a less experienced, less thoughtful man would not
have known.

Yet his ardors were many, once we were under way on
the "Long Trail." Hawaii, that in later years he came to
call his Love-Land, warmed his veins to the very delicious-
ness of our venture — the keenest zest of which was that we
were seeing the world together. In the midst of his morn
ing's thousand words, he would break off to remind me of
the beauty and adventure we should find below the equator ;
and then, realizing that a half -hour had been lost from his
busy time, he would pick up his charmed ink-pencil :

' ' There — don 't talk to me any more, woman ! How am I
going to get my thousand words done, to pay for those pearls

ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME 165

we're going to buy in the Paumotus and Torres Straits, and
all that turtle shell from Melanesia, if you keep me from
work now!" — Poor me, speechless, with clasped hands of
transport in his own rapturous imaginings. But, since the
youngling philosopher, who always dreamed with his two
feet upon solid earth, seldom failed to bring his intentions
to pass, safely enough I thought to count upon the gleaming
sea-seeds and polished turtle-scales, the adventuring for
which was to be seven-eighths of the prize. Again, look
ing up with visions in his deep eyes :

" Think, think where we are bound — the very names
stir all the younger red corpuscles in one! — Bankok,
Celebes, Madagascar, Java, Sumatra, Natal — oh, I'll take
you to them all ; and your lap shall be filled with pearls, my
dear, and we shall have them set in fretted gold by the smiths
.of the Orient."

As a sailor, I could not but feel that he was a consum
mate artist. As that matchless sea-writer, Joseph Conrad,
reminds us, "an artist is a man of action, whether he
creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the
issue of a complicated situation. ' ' And Jack London 's was
a facility of adjustment, a quickness of conception and exe
cution, "upon the basis, " again to quote Conrad, "of just
appreciation of means and ends which is the highest quality
of the man of action. ' '

All a piece of wonder it was, on and round about the
narrow precipitous deck of the Snark, herself a mere scud
ding fleck of matter advancing upon the vast undulating
plane of the Pacific. How could a true sailor be bored, the
longest day under the arching blue sky — the excellent trades
hunting his ship to its purple havens? For Jack found me
sailor, too, albeit a lamentably untechnical mariner — ever
he stood aghast at the hopelessness of getting me to present,
1 1 so that the Man from Mars could understand, ' ' certain or
dinary, primary principles of seamanship. But my love and
true feel for the very shape of a boat, and for her perform-

166 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

ance, and for the whole world of water, easily he saw were
not to be questioned ; while always, in entering and leaving
the most dangerous passages, he sent me to the wheel to
cooperate with his piloting. "It's this way:" he had it.
"There are many boats, but only one woman; boats will
come and go, and captains will come and go, but Charmian
will be with me always, at the helm."

Here I am tempted to digress, in order to word a still but
not small worry that was mine during our married life.
Jack's correlations between brain and body were exception
ally balanced. But there showed in him one inexactitude that
led me to nurse a dread that my own hand, under his com
mand, might some most inopportune time wreck a boat.
I do not know when I first began to notice that at intervals
he would say "right" for "left," but sometimes I would
promptly call his attention to the mistake while his voice
was still in the air. My principal fear was that, some irre
trievable consequence having occurred, the responsibility
might not be easy to place; and I prided myself upon un
questioning obedience aboard ship. Jack liked that, and
only once did we personally come to grief. It was upon a
midnight in the Solomon Islands, dark as a hat, and Jack,
sick and apprehensive, was trying to make out a certain
plantation anchorage on Guadalcanal. Suddenly, though
the shore signal lights were identical, he discovered that we
were almost on the rocks. It eventuated that another plan
tation than the one we sought had irresponsibly copied the
other's lights. I started to put the wheel hard down at
Jack 's swift, tense command. i ' Hard down ! Hard down !
quick!" he repeated. Then I, like an idiot, "Oh, I am!
I am!" It was too much for the disciplined sailorman.
Not of babbling courtesies nor babies nor women was
he thinking, but of saving the vessel that insured the safe
ty of all the souls on board. And I let my own silly,
mawkish, fever-warped nerves go up against this intellect
ually-cool, efficient manipulating of a real issue. Since

ECUADOE; PANAMA; HOME 167

Jack never apologized for his sharp reproof, "Obey orders
and don 't talk back ! " I truly believe that no realization of
his harshness entered the mind so bent upon a life-and-
death problem.

No, we did not know the meaning of boredom. And
" Aren't you glad I'm your husband?" Jack would laugh
over my enthusiasms. Or, tenderly, "You would marry a
sailor!" when I floundered into the head-splitting fever
attacks. But dearest of all was his assurance, reiterated in
illness and discouragement: "You do not know what you
mean to me. It is like being lost in the Dangerous Archi
pelago, and coming into safe harbor at last."

It is all a piece of wonder, the sea, to such as we : still
magic of calms, where one 's boat lies with motionless grace
upon a shadow-flecked expanse of mirror; or when one
laughs in the pelt of warm sea-rain from a ragged gray sky
of clouds ; or peers for blue-black squalls darkling upon the
silver moonlit waves; or lifts prideful, fond eyes to the
small ship's goodly spars standing fast in a white gale; or
gazes in marvel at those same spars lighted to flame by
the red-gilt morning sunrays from over some green and
purple savage isle feared of God and man ; or braces to the
Pacific rollers bowling upon the surface of the eternal
unagitated depths; or scans the configuration of coasts
from inadequate charts ; or steers, tense, breathless, through
the gateways of but half -known reefs, into enchanted coral-
rings below ' l the lap of the Line " ; or looks with misleading
candor into the eyes of man-eating human beings ; or being
received ashore on scented Polynesian ' ' fragments of Para
dise" aplume with waving palms, with brown embraces, into
the "high seat of abundance." It is all wonder and deep
delight, this ' l smoke of life ' ' ; and often and often we sur
prised ourselves thinking or voicing our pity for the "vain
people of landsmen" who have no care for such joys as
ours. Jack, embodiment of fearlessness, so vivid in

168 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

thought, and action, and body, was a ringing challenge
to any who were not half-dead.

On November 24, 1907, in 126° 20' W.Lon., 60° 47' N.Lat,
Jack wrote George Sterling:

" Oh, You Greek :—

"I haven't received a letter for two months, and two months
more will probably elapse before I pick up a mountain of mail in
Papeete. You know what my mail is — think of four months of it
coming in one swat !

"49 days next Monday since last saw Hilo and land, and we're
in the Doldrums now, the Marquesas many hundreds of miles away.

' ' Did anybody ever tell you that it 's a hard voyage from Hawaii
to the Marquesas? . . . The South Sea Directory says that the
whaleship captains doubted if it could be accomplished from
Hawaii to Tahiti — which is much easier than the Marquesas.
We've had to fight every inch of easting, in order to be able to make
the islands when we fall in with the S. E. traders. . . . The first two
weeks out of Hilo we met the N. E. trades well around to the
east and even at times a bit north of east. Result was we sagged
south (across a westerly current) and made practically no easting
till we struck the Variables.

"But I'm working every day!

"Say, you've seen dolphin. Think of catching them on rod
and reel! That's what I'm doing. Gee! You ought to see them
take the line out (I have 600 yards on the reel, and need it all).
The first one fought me about twenty minutes, when I hauled him
to gaff — four feet six inches of blazing beauty.

"When they strike, they run away like mad, leaping into the
air again and again, prodigiously, and in each mid-leap, shaking
their heads like young stallions.

' ' 1 find it hard to go to sleep after catching one of them. The
leaping, blazing beauty of it gets on my brain.

"I never saw dolphins really until this trip. Pale-blue, after
being struck, they turn golden. On deck, of course, afterward,
they run the gamut of color. But in the water, after the first wild
run, they are pure gold.

"I am going to write up the voyage of the Snark and entitle

ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME 169

it: ' Around the World with Three Gasoline Engines and a
Wife.' "

And a postscript : ' l Talk about luck ! I have played poker and
I have now lost the ninth successive time, eight out of the nine
times being the only loser. You can't beat that, you ever-blessed
Greek! "Wolf."

In Jack's ten-weeks' mail at Tahiti was a letter from
his children's mother, announcing her approaching nup
tials. His natural paternal interest in the prospective step
father of his two daughters, combined with news of the cur
rent panic in Wall Street, determined a break in the Snark
voyage. We took a thirty-days' round-trip to San Fran
cisco, on the old S.S. Mariposa, whose roomy portholes were
model for the means of "Martin Eden's" suicide. Once
more in Tahiti, Jack wrote Cloudesley Johns under date of
February 17, 1908 :

"Oh, you can't lose the Snark. By the time Charmian and I
had arrived in Frisco, we were both saying: 'Me for the Snark'
We were honestly homesick for her. We 're a whole lot safer on the
Snark than on the streets of San Francisco. Wish, often, that you
could be with us on some of our jamborees and adventures. We
sail from here in several days for Samoa, the Fijiis, New Cale
donia, and the Solomons. Have just finished a 145,000 word novel
that is an attack upon the bourgeoisie and all that the bourgeoisie
stands for. It will not make me any friends. [This was " Martin
Eden'7.]

" 'The Iron Heel' ought to be out by now. I wonder what
you will think of it.

' ' Have just finished Austin Lewis ' ' American Proletariat. ' It 's
good stuff. ' '

Somewhere along our gorgeous sea highway, the mail
brought Jack word of the public's reception of "The Iron
Heel," which cast him into temporary gloom.

"Just the same," he burst into his sunny chuckle, "I
told the bourgeoisie a thing or two they didn't know about

170 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the way their blessed laws are made!'* He referred espe
cially to the Dick Militia Bill, passed by the Senate in 1903.
For some reason best known to the Solons, very few Ameri
cans knew of this bill. Practically none but the Socialist
papers gave it notice. Chapter VIII of "The Iron Heel"
started considerable publicity for both himself and Eepre-
sentative Dick of Ohio. I have in my hand a clipping
as late as February 1917, headed: "State Guards in a
Dilemma : Dick Bill and National Defense Act Conflict With
Some of the Units. ' '

Jack, pressed to relate our wildest experiences in can-
nibaldom, would sometimes tell the following :

"We had excitement enough, as Charmian will testify; but
there were no such hairbreadth escapes as that of a missionary we
heard of. This good fellow was preaching in one of the islands
where man-eating is practised, and was captured by a skeptical
chief. To his surprise, he was immediately released, but on the
condition that he carry a small sealed packet to a neighboring
mountain chief. The missionary was so grateful that, meeting a
detachment of English sailors from a battle cruiser, he declined to
accompany them to a safer territory. The sealed packet should be
delivered as he had promised. But an officer in the midst of the
discussion opened it. Therein, tucked among some small onions,
was a message to the chief :

" 'The bearer will be delicious with these.' '

During the space in time taken up by the SnarJc episode,
namely between April 1907 and July 1909, Jack London, in
addition to the administration of ship's affairs, recreation,
wide reading, sightseeing, and weeks idle from illnesses,
wrote the equivalent of more than eight full volumes, as
follows :

"The Cruise of the Snark," published serially in The
Cosmopolitan and Harper's Weekly.

"Martin Eden/' begun in Honolulu in summer of 1907,
finished at Papeete, Tahiti, February 1908, and serial pub-

ECUADOE; PANAMA; HOME 171

lication commenced in The Pacific Monthly, of Portland,
Oregon, in September of same year.

"Adventure," a novel depicting the manner of life we
lived ashore in the Solomons. Begun while cruising among
that Group, and often interrupted for the writing of timely
short work.

4 * South Sea Tales." These splendid stories, unlike
the later ones in "A Son of the Sun," were written dur
ing the voyage.

4 'The House of Pride" collection of Hawaii romances.
"Burning Daylight." This novel was started in Quito,
Ecuador.

And short stories, later dispersed throughout five differ
ent volumes :

"The Chinago" ("When God Laughs")
"A Piece of Steak" ("When God Laughs")
"Make Westing" ("When God Laughs")
"South of the Slot" ("The Night-Born")
"The Other Animals" (Article replying to Theodore
Roosevelt's attack upon the "nature fakers," and collected
in "Revolution.")

"Nothing that Ever Came to Anything" ("The Human
Drift.")

In Australia, Jack, on condition that I should accom
pany him, reported the Burns-Johnson prizefight for
The Star, Sydney, and the New York Herald. He also wrote
a series of articles upon his general local impressions, as
well as the labor situation in the Commonwealth from his
socialist viewpoint. All of this work I shall collect at a
future date for book publication.

Jack had much fun over the charge of "nature-faking,"
inasmuch as it arose over a misreading on the part of the
President, of the incident, in "White Fang," of the wolf-
dog killing the lynx ; whereas Mr. Eoosevelt erroneously at
tacked the author for having the lynx do away with the dog.

172 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

I! must not be forgotten that throughout the traverse of
the Pacific, Jack failed not in sounding his trumpet for the
brotherhood of man. Wherever opportunity presented, he
either debated, as in Honolulu, or lectured, as in Tahiti and
Samoa, or used his pen when too ill to speak, as in Australia.

I might mention, if I have not previously done so, that
Jack was accustomed, in the course of his literary career,
to seek perspective upon his plots and motifs before de
veloping them on paper; but during the Snarls voyage he
often went at the actual weaving of a story rather than
merely filing notes upon it.

For the benefit of editors and readers who have scoffed
at Jack London 's novel " Adventure " as an inaccurate,
over-drawn picture of savagery in the Twentieth Century,
I select passages from his letter to George Sterling, from
the Solomon Islands, October 31, 1908:

1 ' For the last three or four months the Snark has been cruising
about the Solomons. This is about the rawest edge of the world.
Head-hunting, cannibalism and murder are rampant. Among the
worst islands of the group, day and night we are never unarmed,
and night watches are necessary. Charmian and I went on a cruise
on another boat around the island of Malaita. We had a black
crew. The natives we encountered, men and women, go stark
naked, and are armed with bows, arrows, spears, tomahawks, war-
clubs and rifles. (Have Fiji and Solomon war-clubs for you.)
When ashore we always had armed sailors with us, while the men
in the whale-boat laid by their oars with the bow of the boat pointed
seaward. We went swimming once in the mouth of a fresh-water
river, and all about us in the bush our sailors were on guard, while
we, when we undressed, left our clothes conspicuously in one place,
and our weapons hidden in another, so that in case of surprise we
would not do the obvious thing.

"And to cap it all, we got wrecked on a reef. The minute
before we struck not a canoe was in sight. But they began to
arrive like vultures out of the blue. Half of our sailors held them
off with rifles, while the other half worked to save the vessel. And

ECUADOB; PANAMA; HOME 173

down on the beach a thousand bushmen gathered for the loot.
But they didn't get it, nor us.

"Am leaving here in two days to go to Sydney, where I go
into hospital for an operation. And I have other afflictions, from
a medical standpoint vastly more serious than the operation. "

The one and only reason that our splendid adventure
terminated in two years instead of seven, or ten, or un
numbered years, was that Jack London's supersensitive or
ganism prevented. I remember him arguing, in Hawaii,
with Dr. E. S. Goodhue, the point of his working-pace in
the tropics. Neither Jack nor I was willing to forego
any jot of our activity, mental or physical. In the end,
the ultra-violet rays exacted their toll of his nervous system,
as the Doctor had forewarned. In his own words :

"I went to Australia to go into hospital, where I spent five
weeks. [The operation was for a double-fistula, caused we never
knew how.] I spent five months miserably sick in hotels. The
mysterious malady that affected my hands was too much for the
Australian specialists. ... It extended from my hands to my
feet so that at times I was helpless as a child. On occasion my
hands were twice their natural size, with seven dead and dying
skins peeling off at the same time. There were times when my
toe-nails, in twenty-four hours, grew as thick as they were long.
After filing them off, inside another twenty-four hours they were
as thick as before.

"The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-
parasitic, and that, therefore, it must be nervous. It did not mend,
and it was impossible for me to continue the voyage ... I reasoned
that in my own climate of California I had always maintained a
stable nervous equilibrium.

"Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have
found out what was the matter with me. I encountered a book
by Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. Woodruff of the United States
Army, entitled 'Effects of Tropical Light on White Men.' Then
I knew ... In brief, I had a strong predisposition toward the tis-
sue-destructiveness of tropical light. I was being torn to pieces by

174 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the ultra-violet rays just as many experimenters with the X-Ray
have been torn to pieces.

"In passing, I may mention that among other afflictions that
jointly compelled the abandonment of the voyage, was one that is
variously called the healthy man's disease, European leprosy, and
Biblical leprosy. Unlike True leprosy, nothing is known of this
mysterious malady . . . The only hope the doctors had held out
to me was a spontaneous cure, and such a cure was mine." [This
was simply psoriasis, as known in the United States, for which
many cures are advertised, but none known that is efficacious.]

Finally, as a tribute to my own whole-hearted devo
tion to the voyage and all that it meant, Jack offers :

* * A last word : the test of the voyage. It is easy enough for me
or any man to say that it was enjoyable. But there is a better wit
ness, the one woman who made it from beginning to end. In hos
pital when I broke the news to Charmian that I must go back to
California, the tears welled into her eyes. For two days she was
wrecked and broken by the knowledge that the happy, happy voyage
was abandoned.'*

The venture definitely thrown over, Jack dispersed his
crew, laid up the Snark in one of beautiful Sydney Har
bor's green crannies, and shipped home our effects. The
yacht eventually netted less than one-tenth of her original
inflated price, and went to trade and recruit in the New
Hebrides. Jack and I, loath to retrace our way across the
ocean in conventional mode, watched for chance to ship
on anything but a passenger liner. Our luck it was to
catch, upon extremely short notice, a rusty leviathan of
a Scotch collier, the Tymeric, Captain Kobert Mcllwaine,
from Newcastle, N.S.W., to Guayaquil, Ecuador. With
us sailed Yoshimatsu Nakata, the eighteen-year-old, father
ly Japanese soul who had joined the Snark as cabin boy
when we left Hawaii. Nakata remained our loving and
beloved shadow for nine responsible years; and I feel
free to assert, for Jack London as well as myself, that

ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME 175

when the faithful brown boy came to marry and resign from
our service at the end of 1915, life never seemed quite the
same again. Nakata is since a graduate of the San Fran
cisco College of Physicians and Surgeons, and success
fully wields his fashionable forceps in his own offices in
Honolulu, with two assistants.

"No man is a hero to his valet " was not applicable in
Jack London's household. Servants worshiped him, for
he never tired helping them with his knowledge of all kinds.

For nearly three weeks after she stood out at sea, the
Tymeric, resembling a log awash, fought a violent gale. I
was time and again laid low with the terrible Solomon Island
malaria. Jack and Nakata, suffering only occasional light
attacks, nursed me like gentlest women. Jack was espe
cially sympathetic in that I was missing the magnificent
sight, from the bridge, of the plunging, submerging hull of
the steamer, which he, "who lived with storms and spaces
like a kinsman," as some one has aptly said, so reveled in.
Here is his reference to the gale :

" We were a tramp collier, rusty and battered, with six thousand
tons of coal in our hold. Life lines were stretched fore and aft ;
and on our weather side, attached to smokestack guys and rigging,
were huge rope-nettings, hung there for the purpose of breaking
the force of the seas and so saving our mess-room doors. But the
doors were smashed and the mess-room washed out just the same. ' '

Yet Jack compared all this as monotonous alongside
sailing a small boat on San Francisco Bay.

We were forty-three days on this passage, seeing land
but twice, and upon two successive days — first, fair Pit-
cairn Island of Bounty fame, on the southernmost edge of
the farflung Paumotus whose northernmost edge we had
skirted when westward-bound; and next, the low isle of
Ducie, its tropic scents of blossom and cocoanut borne out
across the water on the warm breeze.

Captain Mcllwaine proved a mine of interest to Jack,

176 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

who wrote a brace of his most thoughtful stories, "Samuel"
and "The Sea Farmer" (in "The Strength of the Strong")
from notes made from the canny skipper 's yarns. I worked
up a County McGee, North of Ireland, vocabulary for Jack,
often reporting the quaint speech under the table at meals.
The Skipper caught me at it, I know; but he continued
generously unabated in reminiscence.

Here is part of a letter Jack wrote off Pitcairn Island on
May 2, to George Sterling:

"Never you mind N and all the other little bats, but go

on hammering out beauty. If the urge comes from within to write
propaganda, all right; otherwise you violate yourself. There are
plenty who can do propaganda, but darned few that can create
beauty. Some day you may see your way to fuse both, but mean
while do what you heart listeth.

" * Memory' is great! I've read it aloud a dozen times. (You
should see us, George, when you send us a new poem! We sit
and read it with tears in our eyes!) "

One could draw a sheaf of sketches upon that month in
Ecuador. We climbed great Chimborazo, twelve thousand
feet of its twenty-two thousand, on the wonderful American
railway; thence descended two thousand feet to Quito,
where, at the Hotel Eoyal, over a fortnight was spent ; and
before sailing upon the Erica for Panama, friends took us
alligator-hunting up the River Guayas, where Jack, who
never did anything by halves, laid in a large supply of
salted skins.

As to this marvelous country, he ever afterward
raved of its possibilities of agricultural development, and
advised more than one ambitious young man that Ecuador
would give him "the chance of his life."

There are many incidents that throw added light
upon Jack London 's individuality. Such as his indignation
toward the unfair methods of the bull-ring, as against the
" white-man 's game" of prizefighting — his passion leading

ECUADOR; PANAMA; HOME 177

him to write "The Madness of John Harned" (in "The
Night-Born"); and his interest, for once, in American
horse-racing as practised in Quito; and the Latin- Ameri
can character as displayed about him, in public, and in
the clubs where he took a look-in at the gambling of
Ecuadorian gentlemen and their psychology as regarded
payment of losses. He was in the best of humor for most
of the sojourn, little troubled with fever, and spilled some
of his whimsical disgust at the undependableness of Quito 's
inhabitants in a humorous skit, "Nothing that Ever Came
to Anything" (in "The Human Drift"), which is the nar
ration of an actual occurrence.

One sweet manifestation of himself shone out one day
when I was strolling alone. A spic-and-span victoria was
sent all over the shopping district to find me, because, for
sooth, a peddler with her basket of laces had come to our
rooms, and Jack did not want me to miss her. He hovered
about the pair of us seated on the floor in a sea of needle
work, inciting me to satisfy my craving to the uttermost. A
day he spent taking me to convents, in search for embroid
eries, and joined in a blanket-haggling revel in an old plaza
— brilliant native dyes of hand-loom weaves from llama
wool. He did balk, however, at adding a tiny, shivering
green monkey to the menage.

In Panama, a rousing American military Fourth of July
was followed by a ten days ' stay at the Hotel Tivoli, whence
we explored some of the surrounding country, saw the work
of the great canal, and shopped in the Chinese stores. And
I must take space for something that happened on the
evening of the Fourth. The hotel was jammed, and we
were obliged to share our small table with an American
couple. The man appeared to be much the worse for the
climate, and his wife evidently spent her life soothing him
into a semblance of fitness for association with his kind.
We extended the ordinary courtesies to them both, but it

178 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

was no use. After the man had sourly declined several
things passed him, suddenly, to Jack, he burst :

"I don't want anything from you!"

Jack gulped. I went chill, as when Manyoungi had in
vited destruction, but again misjudged my man. Instead
of blowing up as the terrified woman expected, Jack turned
to her, and quietly, without interruption, at length and sans
haste, told her exactly what he thought of her husband and
how sorry he was for her. The poor lady, already blanched
and wilted, never raised her eyes nor opened her lips. Nor
did her companion. They presently rose and left the table.

"I couldn't help it," Jack apologized to me. "I was
sorry for her, and I did her a service, I do believe — just in
telling her, before him, what a skunk he is !"

I never saw Jack smite anybody except with a tongue-
lashing; and, so far as I know, during our years together
he never but once struck a man.

We sailed from Colon on the Turrialba for New Orleans.
My temperature on the day of arrival, if memory serves,
was 104°, and I continued for a year to suffer intermittent
attacks of malaria. But Jack, again in his home-land, soon
had cast all trace of fever, as well as of psoriaris, forever
into the discard.

From New Orleans to Oakland his return was hailed
by the newspapers, and reporters boarded the train at a
number of towns. We stopped over but once, at the Grand
Canon of the Colorado, where we found ourselves hospit
ably entertained by the Manager of the Hotel El Tovar and
his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Brandt, as guests of the proprietor,
Mr. Fred Harvey. On July 24, 1909, we were once more
at home in Wake Robin Lodge.

CHAPTER XXXII

BETTJBN FBOM SNABK VOYAGE; A DAUGHTER IS BORN
End— 1909-1910

HOMECOMING, after twenty-seven months of absence,
was not the least of our enviable experiences. There
was so much to see and do. The great stone barn was
completed, roofed with red Spanish tile, and sheltered,
besides horses and vehicles, all of our magnificent collection
of South Sea curios. Concerning this small museum, much
mirth had escaped from the Custom House into the press
as to its value in dollars and cents. Jack's "declaration"
had perforce been couched entirely in terms of stick-tobacco,
which had been the sole medium of exchange with the sav
ages of Melanesia.

Then Eanch improvements were to be inspected, to
gether with the modest increase in stock — colts and calves,
chickens, ducks, and pigeons. Most exciting of all, my
Aunt, as Jack's agent, had added to our possessions the
tiny "Fish Ranch" and the La Motte hundred and thirty
acres adjoining Wake Robin, as well as a broad strip con
necting the same with the Hill property — Jack's "Beauty
Ranch. " There was but one fly in the ointment as regarded
the new acquisition. Certain men had so conducted nego
tiations as to leave Jack's agent in ignorance of a serious
drawback to ownership of the land: upon it rested a thir
teen-year lease of a valuable pit which furnished clay for
the Glen Ellen brickyard. This was not so bad in itself, but
the lease also covered standing timber, which might be cut
at any time by the lessees for use in the brick-kiln furnaces.

179

180 THE BOOK OP JACK LONDON

Jack, in the face of unalterable circumstances, naturally
made the most of the fact that he was entitled to "ten
cents a yard" for all clay hauled down hill, and in course
of time netted a tidy sum which, I must insert, did not com
pensate him for the annoyance of a dusty, rutted right-of-
way over his land, to say nothing of the constant reminder,
whenever plodding teams and creaking loads in clouds of
dust crossed his vision, of the dishonest dealings of his fel
low men. The nuisance was before long abated, and finally
ceased altogether, for the brickyard went out of business
previous to its requirement of any firewood from the La
Motte land. It may interest travelers to know that the
hollow brick used in the beautiful Hotel Oakland, in Jack's
home town, was made at Glen Ellen from material mined
on the Jack London Eanch.

Meanwhile, nothing daunted, Jack, with fabulous forests
in his far-seeing eye, had hesitated not to set out 15,000
baby eucalyptus trees, bought from Stratton 'a in Petaluma,
trying out their vitality on the most impoverished section of
the La Motte holding.

My perspective of the latter months of 1909, from our
return in mid-July on into the winter, is not one of unalloyed
pleasure. For exuberance in our general happy estate was
sorely tempered by anemia and sporadic attacks of the vi
cious malaria that so impaired my usefulness, as well as any
fair qualities I may have possessed as hostess. And from
the first week, Jack and I were not for a day without guests.
Hospitality is a beautiful thing in itself ; but I leave to the
reader my frame of mind, when time and again I was
obliged to lie up for days, my work going behind, and,
not the least of my troubles, the pitiable effect this helpless
ness worked in Jack. Whenever anything interfered with
"the Cheery One's" cheeriness, Jack, under no matter what
merry dissembling, was lamentably at outs with existence.

Despair seemed to reacn its height when during the
duck season, I had to remain home from a long-contem-

A DAUGHTER IS BOEN 181

plated yachting trip up-river which was to include a
house-guest, Louis Augustin, from Canada, and the Sterl
ings. Only at the last moment did I give in, and keep to
my bed. This cruise was made in a rented sloop, Phyllis,
and lasted for several weeks. Jack was not well, and re
turned quite ill, but was soon himself. In the interim, I
had patronized Burke 's Sanitarium for a week — a lovely
Mecca in our own county, administered by a noble man, Mr.
J. P. Burke — and felt greatly improved. Burke 's, by the way,
had formerly been Altruria, a cooperative colony of charm
ing idealists, where I had spent more than one vacation,
going about the country on horseback for a month at a time.

But far be it from me to draw a veil of gloom over
that summer and autumn. There was ample joie du vivre
sprinkled throughout. Jack's work was as always the sus
taining anchor for us both. ' ' Burning Daylight, ' ' the novel
commenced in Quito, Ecuador, was duly "signed, sealed,
and delivered" unto the New York Herald, where it ap
peared serially, and was published by Macmillans in the
fall of 1910. And Jack wrote one short manuscript beside,
on a request to describe the most dramatic moment of his
life. This is entitled "That Dead Men Rise Up Never" (in
"The Human Drift"), a ghost-story founded upon his ex
perience aboard the Sophie Sulherland, from which I have
made quotation in an early chapter.

A short-story collection, "Lost Face," and the novel
"Martin Eden," which has helped shape the purposes of so
many, were the two volumes brought out in 1909. There was
almost universal protest from readers of this novel as to
its author's wisdom in killing off the hero. Jack held that
Martin, robbed both of love and of pleasure in his too-hard-
won fame, and finding no faith in his fellow man to sus
tain him in his loneliness, had nothing left to do, logically
and artistically, but terminate a life that had become a
burden. "Which is where Martin Eden and I differed,"
Jack smiled contentedly. "To be sure, when my own battle

182 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

was won, I had little use for the spoils, so far as fame went;
but I did not become self-centered. I solaced myself with
warm interest in my kind, and I did find love — which is bet
ter than all." Whereupon, he presented his wife with the
first copy in hand, in which he had generously written :
"You see, Martin Eden did not have you!"
Here is a letter, dated April 26, 1910, to one Lillian Col
lins who, neglecting to leave a forwarding address, never
came into possession of Jack's argument in answer to her
protest :

"In reply to your good letter of April 22. I don't know
whether to take it as an unconscious compliment to me, or as a
subtle compliment to me. I quote from your letter : * He was not
physically able to defend himself. He was heartsick; the nerves
of action paralyzed by enormous strain, the power to weigh and
analyze, compare and select, submerged under an overwhelming
sense of loss.'

' ' From the foregoing, and much more that you have said in your
letter, you point out to me that I did succeed in showing the in-
evitableness of his death. I was no more treacherous to Martin
Eden than life is treacherous to many, many men and women. You
continually point out to me where I took unfair advantages of
Martin Eden, l cramming his newly awakened mind with abstraction
which his crude mental processes were not able to assimilate.'
Granted; but do not forget that this was MY Martin Eden, and
that I manufactured him in this very particular, precise and pe
culiar fashion. Having done so, his untimely end is accounted for.
Remember that he was MY Martin Eden, and was made by me in
this fashion. He certainly was not the Martin Eden that you
would have made. I think the disagreement between you and me
lies in that you confuse my Martin Eden with your Martin Eden.

"You say: 'I look upon Martin Eden's selfish individualism
as a crudity adhering from the boy's early habits of life — a lack of
perspective which time and a wider horizon would correct.' And
you complain because he died. Your point is that if I had let him
live, he would have got out of all this slough of despond. Again,
to make a simile which I know will be distasteful to you, let me
point out that the case is exactly parallel with that of a beauti-

A DAUGHTER IS BOEN 183

ful young man, with the body of an Adonis, who cannot swim,
who is thrown into deep water, and who drowns. You cry out,
Give the young man time to learn to swim while he is drowning, and
he will not drown, but will win safely to shore. And the queer
thing, reverting to the original proposition, is, that you yourself,
in sharp, definite terms, point out the very reasons why Martin
Eden couldn't swim, and had to drown.

1 'You tell me that I asserted that love had tricked and failed
Martin Eden, and that you know better and that I know better.
On the contrary, from what I know of love, I believe that Martin
Eden had his first big genuine love when he fell in love with
Ruth, and that not he alone, but that countless millions of men
and women, have been tricked in one way or another in similar
fashion. However, you are unfair in taking such an assertion
and making the sweeping generalization that I deny all love and
the greatness of all love.

"Then, it is an endless question. I don't think you and I
have so much of a quarrel over Martin Eden as we have on account
of our different interpretations of life. Your temperament and
your training lead you one way — mine lead me another way. I
think that right there is the explanation of our difference.

''Thanking you for your good letter,

' ' Sincerely yours, ' '

To one who had interpreted Martin Eden as a Socialist,
Jack wrote :

"Contrary to your misinterpretation, Martin Eden was not a
Socialist. On the contrary, I drew him a temperamental, and,
later on, an intellectual Individualist. So much was he an In
dividualist, that he characterized your kind of Individualism as
half-baked Socialism. Martin Eden was a proper Individualist
of the extreme Nietzschean type."

As for public appearances in 1909, Jack read "The
Amateur M. D.," (from "The Cruise of the Snark") in
Oakland, before the Rice Institute in Old Reliance Hall;
and he spoke a number of times, here and there, on other
phases of the Snark voyage. Once he lectured in San Fran
cisco for the Socialists in Dreamland Rink.

184 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

" Among those present" at Wake Robin Lodge that fall
were the Sterlings; Jack's old friend Frank Atherton;
Cloudesley Johns and his bride ; "Lem" Parton, author and
editor; Mrs. Lucy Parsons, a plucky widow of the Hay-
market tragedy in Chicago ; " A No. 1," the engaging gentle
man-tramp who left his picturesque "monaker" carved on
the Lodge veranda as well as along the railroad route to
Glen Ellen, on which he "beat" his passage; and Emma
Goldman and Dr. Ben Reitman, who, with friendly naivete,
tried to divert Jack from his socialism, which they derided,
toward their unconstructive anarchism, at which he jeered,
while not depreciating their martyr-sincerity and courage
ous, if (to him) misguided sacrifices. Of these and some
others he later said: "The anarchists whom I know are
dear, big souls whom I like and admire immensely. But
they are dreamers, idealists. I believe in law . . . you can
see it in my books — all down in black and white." I have
more to say about this when presently drawing together
the threads of Jack 's life near its close.

And in his two or three days7 entertainment of this
woman and man, one of whom during the Great War fell
into such evil fortune, he argued seriously as little as pos
sible, devoting himself to laughing at and with them, and
playing juvenile pranks. One of these was the placing
at Dr. Reitman's plate of an attractive little red book,
bearing the title "Four Weeks, a Loud Book." The
guest, somewhat of a joker himself, met his Waterloo at
Jack's hands. For when, the book opened, it exploded with
loud report, "Never," Jack would laugh in retrospect, "did
any one jump so high as that red anarchist ! He must have
thought it was a bomb, for he went positively green. He
has the soul of a child — they're such soft people, anarchists,
when it comes to actual violence — and when they do try it,
they usually make a mess of it because they're dreamers and
haven't learned practical brass-tack ways of doing the very
things they so vehemently preach."

A DAUGHTER IS BOEN 185

The ordinary camp recreations prevailed; and Jack,
upon which tenderfoot, during the establishing of himself
as a farmer, certain unreliable or unsound horseflesh was
palmed off by traders for substantial returns, spent much
time, that year and the next, subduing the creatures to his
will. I was often worried when he failed to report for the
evening meal and for hours afterward. After I had satis
fied myself, from repeated successes, of his prudence and
wisdom in forestalling the scant and often addled gray-
matter of our equine friends, I said, perhaps carelessly:

"I don't worry about you any more when you are out
with your incorrigible horses I"

For once our mental lines were crossed. Jack looked as
puzzled and grieved as an abandoned child. I hastened to
explain the reason for my lightened emotions — confidence in
his methods; whereupon he was as proud as he had been
taken aback and hurt. It was not wholly true — my flat state
ment that I had ceased to worry. There could not fail to be
an undercurrent of apprehension, while an occasional minor
accident, that left its scar upon my man, or further dis
qualified delicate ankle or wrist, prevented my nerves from
becoming unresponsive.

How he gloried in it all — how he beamed and fairly
quivered with achievement when, say, he had, with months
of patient "staying with it," beguiled spidery little Fleet
from her custom of bolting downhill with nose high in air to
the detriment of all control ; or his excusable bragging when,
for fifteen hundred miles, he drove the notorious outlaw,
Gert, as wheeler in our four-in-hand — she who had broken
the spirit of every owner who had tried to hang harness
upon her rebellious frame.

When, by Christmas of 1909, there was no doubt that,
barring mishap, June should crown our enduring love with
parenthood, our happiness was boundless. Jack was a new
man — all himself and something ineffably more. It showed

186 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

in his every look, the touch of his hands, the vibration of
his voice. When the latest volume, " Revolution, " came in
the spring, this is what he wrote in the fly-leaf:

"My Mate- Woman:

"Not that I shall be able to tell you anything about revolu
tion — you, who in a few short weeks from now, will be prime mover
in turning our Wake Robin household upside down with the most
delicious and lovable revolution that we can ever hope to experi
ence.

"Mate Man.
"Wake Robin Lodge,
"April 24, 1910."

Always I shall cherish, I think above all others, the
memories of those months. Never had I been so joyful, nor
so strong. It seems as if all nature with lavish hands con
tributed to the making of the perfect child I desired and
bore. i l How the birds do sing and shout ! ' ' raves my diary.
11 — meadow-larks, blue-jays, orioles, linnets and wild can
aries bickering at bath and play ; gentle mourning-doves at
twilight ; chattering, whirring quail in the warm woods, and
quaint little owls calling by night. " And "Such flowered
fields I never saw!" Not the least of our blisses was wan
dering in the eucalyptus "forest," not yet knee-high, dream
ing of when they should some day be over our heads on
horse-back. "They'll only be a few months older than our
boy ! ' ' Jack would say.

We did not stay strictly at home, but harnessed young
Maid and Ben in our light, yellow- wheeled run-about, packed
writing materials and toilet articles, and drove for a week at
a time about the country, stopping over wherever it looked
good to us. "We three," Jack, at this sweetest height of
living, would breathe leaning to my willing ear as the bays
forged up mountainsides or dropped into the exquisite val
leys. I have set down these words of his on an April
morning: "Wife, little mother, sweetheart — I cannot ex
press the love I feel for you these days!"

A DAUGHTER IS BORN 187

One night we spent in Petaluma, and attended a per
formance by an all but stranded company of itinerant play
ers. * ' Tell you what, Mate Woman — if you 're game for it, ' '
Jack whispered, "let me send word behind for them all to
join us at supper/7

It was done. The affair came off. The troupe looked
hungry, but partook sparingly of a very good repast, as
if hesitating to divulg'e their chronic emptiness. Jack
was all keyed up to order cocktails, wine, champagne,
anything to put them at their ease ; but one spoke for light
beer, and the rest, every soul of them, insisted upon milk.

Another journey was to Carmel-by-the-Sea, where we
were guests of the George Sterlings.

There is a remark in the diary concerning lack of excite
ment in passing through the tail of Halley's Comet.

Ernest Untermann, socialist, author, painter, and per
haps best known as translator of Karl Marx, spent some
time at Wake Robin, while other friends came and went.
Eliza, Shepard, with her boy Irving, had come to live in
the little Fish Ranch house, under what, we always main
tained, was the biggest madrono in California; and Eliza
shortly began to assist Jack in the business of the ranch,
attending to accounts and " overhead. " For in May we
had swelled our estate by the seven hundred acres of the
Kohler property, and Jack needed such aid in carry
ing out his headful of ambitions. "He's burgeoning with
all sorts of happiness,7' my journal recalls, "with love of
the land, with his new mare, Gert the Outlaw — why, his eyes
glisten when he speaks of her; and with life and its
promises. " In my copy of "Theft," a play he wrote for
Olga Nethersole that spring, but which was never acted, he
inscribed :

"Dear My- Woman:

' ' How our days continue to grow fuller and sweeter !

' l Your Lover-Man. ' '

188 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Speaking of "Theft," this time Jack considered he had
written a fairly good play; but it went the rounds of the
dramatic agencies in New York without being placed —
this after Miss Nethersole had decided against it. Besides
" Theft," in the first half of 1910, Jack commenced a fan
tastic piece of long fiction, "The Assassination Bureau."
This, interrupted by the death of the baby, he never fin
ished. Only death itself, it would seem, could compel that
man to stay his hand. It is noteworthy that his only un
completed work is this "The Assassination Bureau," and
the novel left less than half finished when he himself went
"into the dark."

A short Klondike story, "The Night-Born," was also
written that spring, and "The Human Drift," a synthesis
of years of research into the great developing forces in
human history.

How much one can live through — physically, mentally —
and splendidly recover from ! The baby was born upon high
noon of Sunday, June 19, in an Oakland hospital. In my
little old record I read : i ' Then came on the terrible hours,
when Jack helped me, breathed with me, loved me and

praised me " "We named her Joy, Mate and I." She

was a beautiful baby, they told me, all who saw her. I was
so near to fading out that I feared my strength would fail
through sheer emotion if I looked at the little soul until I
had had time to gather my forces; so they carried
her away. When Eliza had come from Glen Ellen at Jack 's
bidding, she found him so radiant with relief after his own
sharp strain, so excited telling her of the small one's fair
skin and gray eyes, "Just like Mate's and mine. Anglo-
Saxon through and through!" that she had difficulty in
learning whether he was father to a son or a daughter.
The fact that he had prayed for a boy was forgotten in the
larger matter of a living, breathing child of whichever sex.

A DAUGHTER IS BOEN 189

What lie said was : "Boy or girl, it does n't matter — so long
as it's Charmian's!"

Poor little Joy! The severity of her birth, coupled
with certain unwisdom, or ignorance, in the handling of the
same, within thirty-eight hours had cost her life. "A per
fect child," they said, after those perfect months that went
into the creation of her. I go on from some notes headed
"First Thoughts": "He came to me, and Eliza, and, one
on either side my bed, Mate told me with a brave, bright
face. And I did not make it harder for him than I could
help. But oh! the pity of it! Our own baby, our little
daughter, ours, our Joy-Baby, only thirty-eight hours old —
gone in the twilight of the morning."

The New York Herald had long ahead engaged Jack to
write up the Jeffries- Johnson prizefight, wherever it should
be staged, together with ten days' observation, previous to
the big event, of the contestants ' camps. Jack was no more
loath to break his pledge than I to have him ; and it was with
great satisfaction to me, for one, that I was pronounced
out of danger from a slight operation, and that Jack could
go away without apprehension. The prospective scene of
the fight had been moved over California several times, and
finally settled upon Eeno, Nevada, so I could not see my
husband for the best part of two weks. He departed June
22, and sent me daily "Lettergrams." On the morning of
the fight, he wired: "I wish you were by my side to-day."

It was reported, I am reminded by news clippings of
that month, that "Jack London lost heavily on the Reno
fight. ' ' But this could not be, since he laid but a few dollars
at most, and a hat, a dinner, and so forth.

And now, an episode, further to make clear Jack Lon
don's reactions to the corrupt injustices that may surround
such a man :

Having fortified myself against shock by determining
not to be shocked by anything, if I would live, on the third

190 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

morning after the baby came I received in quiet the spec
tacle of my handsome husband with one large optic neatly
closed and plastered with what appeared to be pink paint.

To my studiedly calm and interested inquiry, he frankly
told me ' ' all about it. " I give the facts as he related them :

Leaving me the day before, after breaking the baby's
death, he had gone into Oakland's business center to at
tend to final arrangements for his Reno journey. Winding
up at the barber's, he then strolled, miserable and grieving,
down Broadway.

"You know how I hate walking," he broke in. "And I
usually seem to get into trouble when I do walk! I swear
I'll never walk again. Listen to what happened:"

Noticing, in the windows of the Oakland Tribune office,
a display of an "Autobiography of Jeffries," he bought
several copies, thinking to pass them along to other cor
respondents at Eeno. Continuing, absorbed in the morn
ing's disaster to our hopes, he became aware that he had
strayed into old haunts, down around Webster and Eighth
and Ninth streets — in his boyhood a respectable residential
neighborhood, but now infested with Chinese gambling
houses.

As he went along, pondering the great change, he saw
an American saloon, and near its main entrance a smaller
door that suggested ingress to its lavatory. Entering, he
found himself in a narrow passage-way, terminating in a
large room behind the barroom proper, and evidently a
night resort, judging from the tables and chairs. What ap
peared to be two lavatory doors were at the farther end,
opening out of a short hall that led into still another apart
ment, where a lowering figure sat eating alone.

Jack, with a salutation to which the other growled
something he did not hear, opened a door and passed
through. Before he had time to shut it behind him, the
man had thrust his foot inside, threateningly ordering him
out.

A DAUGHTER IS BOEN 191

"I believe he thought I was there to post on his walls
some of the gaudy literature I had under my arm," Jack
told me. ' ' At any rate, I was not in the mood for trouble,
especially in such cramped space, and spoke in a conciliatory
way while I got into the big room and made for the passage
out, intending to escape as quick as God would let me. I
knew his kind, and wanted none of him. And I thought of
you, and of my promise to the New York Herald."

What next took place — the man's unprovoked attack,
Jack's scientific stalling, never striking a blow, the ap
pearance from the barroom of an audience of pasty-faced
night-birds who came to look on, and his difficulty, once he
had worked his way to the street, of getting an officer to con
sent to arrest the dive-keeper — all this he has graphically
described in a short story, "The Benefit of the Doubt"
(in volume "The Night Born").

What he did not include in the story was that it turned
out that the Hebrew police judge who dared to sit on the
case, was in truth owner of the resort. Jack learned of
this through a letter from a well-wishing stranger, who sug
gested he look up the records. When Eliza went to do this,
every obstacle was put in her way; but she prevailed, and
her homecoming with the notes she had made was an occa
sion for triumphant celebration in the London household.

The reporters, as always paid to "give Jack Lon
don the worst of it wherever possible," hinted at the vilest
construction upon his presence in the low resort. The San
Francisco Bulletin account was the most decent — because,
according to Joseph Noel, in charge of the Oakland office,
he offered to throw up his position rather than distort his
friend's account of the one-sided scrimmage.

Jack was keen for the trial, but got it postponed until
after the Eeno prizefight. Never have I seen him so cut
up as when the Judge dismissed the case, giving both com
plainants "the benefit of the doubt," as faithfully told
in the story of that name. And the exasperating newspaper

192 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

lie as to his shaking hands with the dive-proprietor and
their " departing for the nearest saloon, " is as accurately
recorded.

Jack worked off, in the fiction, a fantastic revenge. The
eastern weekly's editor, before accepting the yarn, made
sure through the author that he would not be liable for
libel. Quite different from his usual eventual tolerance,
Jack never forgave the Hebrew Judge. "Some day, some
where, I am going to 'get' him," he would say at long inter
vals. "I shall watch him all years, and some time, when
he least looks for it, I shall get him. I don't know just how
— perhaps it will be in thwarting his dearest ambition ; but
mark my words, I intend to get him." Jack's countenance,
no matter how one sympathized with his viewpoint, was not
good to look upon at such a time. But his cards were played
squarely, as always, face up on the table. He sent the fol
lowing open letter (I typed it for him during convalescence)
to the newspapers of San Francisco and Oakland, the same
post carrying a copy to the magistrate that he might be pre
pared for the writer's deadly interest in him:

"Some day, somewhere, somehow, I am going to get
you legally, never fear. I shall not lay myself open to the
law. I know nothing about your past. Only now do I begin
to interest myself in your past, and to keep an eye on your
future. But get you I will, some day, somehow, and I shall
get you to the full hilt of the law and the legal procedure
that obtains among allegedly civilized men."

One day, long afterward, out of a sudden whimsey, Jack
had his sister telephone to arrange an interview for him in
the office of that grafting judicator. "Oh, I intend no
violence, ' ' he allayed my start ; " I just want to tell him a
'few.' " But the other had hastily pleaded an imminent
and important engagement elsewhere. Jack died unavenged,
unless the Judge's conscience, or fear of his enemy, were
punishment enough.

It was mainly grit that carried Jack through the Eeno

A DAUGHTER IS BORN 193

period. He was miserably ill, probably from the effects of
the Muldowney struggle, and coughed exhaustingly.

The fiasco of the fight did not improve his spirits —
"It wasn't a fight, " he wrote me, "It was awful."

Once back in Oakland, and the afternoons with me in
hospital resumed, he told me he was having his sputum ex
amined for traces of tuberculosis, for he was thoroughly
alarmed at the obstinacy of the racking cough and soreness
in his chest. With our customary rebound from carking
care, the battered pair of us lost no time making tentative
arrangements for a lengthy sojourn in high, dry Arizona,
and presently were all alive with the details of equipment,
saddles, clothing, books — and work! The analysis of the
sputum brought to light no evidence of active "T.B.," al
though a scar that was located in Jack's bronchial tissue
proved his own diagnosis not without foundation.

"Well, that settles our Arizona vacation, " he smiled
over a momentary regret.

Another hospital memory is the day Jack said to me:

"I went last night to the Macdonough to see the De Mille-
Belasco production of 'The Woman/ And take it from me,
my dear — that play never would have been written if I had
not written 'Theft1

I made him return to his Ranch and his writing, while
I devoted every atom of energy to recuperating. In a letter
of July 24, he begs me to ' ' Come home right away ; I '11 cut
out the Jinks this year if you will ... I read your 'First
Thoughts ' and two of your later letters, to Eliza last night ;
and both she and I were in tears. ' '

But it was more than six weeks from June 19, before I
was fit to travel. It was a deep obligation I put upon my
self, then as ever, to take the best care of my health, that I
might be "on deck" as much as possible. Jack's content
depended so vitally upon the brightness of his household.

The first day that I was able to mount a docile horse,
Jack, bestriding his cheerful outlaw, led me from the idyllic

194 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

site on the Beauty Banch where we had decided to build,
into the forested ravine of Asbury Creek. To my aston
ished exclamation at sight of a new bridle trail engineered
upon its precipitous sides, he answered :

"It's the 'Charmian Trail,' Sweetheart, and I saved it
for a surprise. ' '

From that time on, similar trail-making was continually
in progress, until there came to be miles of these green zig
zags within the boundaries of the Jack London Banch,
opening up breath-taking views of the surrounding valleys
and mountains.

In addition to "The Benefit of the Doubt," the author,
not yet in humor, from his aggregation of past troubles, to
settle down to sustained effort, turned out some light
stuff — an airplane story, "Winged Blackmail"; "Bunches
of Knuckles," containing a conversation, with a skipper,
just as I had heard it aboard the Snark; "When the World
Was Young," with a double-personality motif. Then he
penned what he called a picture, or, rather, two successive
pictures, entitled ' ' War, ' ' which he deemed one of his gems ;
and the story ' ' To Kill a Man, ' ' which he also greatly liked.
All the foregoing are bound in ' ' The Night Born. ' '

"Told in the Drooling Ward," a delightful study of the
amiable egotism of a high-class idiot's psychology, but
which Jack had difficulty in selling, was another 1910 pro
duction; also "The Hobo and the Fairy," a dainty and
wholesome tale, both of which will be found in "The Turtles
of Tasman."

While in Oakland, Jack had been called upon by "Bob"
Fitzsimmons and his wife, Julia, and for their use in vaude
ville he wrote a rather inconsequential skit, "The Birth
Mark," which appears in "The Human Drift." The Fitz-
simmonses visited us the first week in September, and * ' Bob, ' '
to the joy of Glen Ellen, forged a mighty horseshoe in the
village smithy, which adorns a door frame of our cottaga

A DAUGHTER IS BORN 195

Next was begun "The Abysmal Brute, " hardly more
than a long-short story, but subsequently published as a
novelette — a cleanly conceived bit of propaganda for the
purifying of the prize-ring. Before the year was out, Jack
had made a start on a series of a dozen Alaskan yarns,
which are built around the central figure of "Smoke
Bellew."

Very little public speaking was heard from him that
year — a Memorial Day address in Sonoma, a lecture in Oak
land, and another, in December, in the Auditorium Annex at
Page and Fillmore Streets, San Francisco, in protest at the
current murders of educators and reformers in Russia, in
Japan, and, in particular, Spain 's inexcusable execution of
Francisco Ferrer.

CHAPTER XXXIII
YACHT "ROAMER"

The End of 1910

AT last, at last, Jack's search for a suitable inland yacht
ended in mid-October, when a friend discovered for
sale the thirty-foot yawl, Roamer, once the fast sloop Iris.
A personal try-out convinced us of her eminent qualifica
tions, despite her ripe years which were rumored to be at
least forty. We schemed a better galley forward, installed
a little coal-stove for winter warmth and cooking, and
had the hull and rigging overhauled.

For it was meant that I, from my salt heredity, and
practice both before and after marriage, should be Jack's
true shipmate. None so keenly as I, perhaps, can appreciate
his own words, written on board the Roamer in Sonoma
Creek, the next spring:

"Once a sailor, always a sailor. The savour of the salt never
stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go
back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I live
beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long.
After several months have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find
myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wonder
ing if the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly
reading the newspapers for reports of the first northern flight of
ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried packing of suit
cases and overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where
the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to
come alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for
the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the
rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the break-

196

YACHT "ROAMEB" 197

ing out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away and
heads up Bay or down."

With Nakata and the cook, Yamamoto (an intellectual
socialist later abstracted back to his native islands by the
long arm of the Mikado), we set sail on October 17, from
Oakland, across the Bay of San Francisco, "than which, "
to quote my captain, "no lustier, tougher sheet of water
can be found for small boat sailing/' for an up-river cruise.

Two days earlier I had found upon my desk a fresh, sky-
blue volume entitled ' l Burning Daylight, ' ' into which. Jack
had woven so much of our daily blessedness. This is the
inscription :

"A sweet land, Mate Woman, an almighty sweet land you and
I have chosen — our Valley of the Moon,

"Your Own Man,

" Jack London. "

My old, old dream come true — to see with Jack this stage
of his youthful performances! He looked much like his
piratical early self, I fancy, in blue dungaree and the time-
honored "tain" pulled down, with a handful of curls, over
his sailor-blue eyes that roved incessantly for changes and
found comparatively few. I had the privilege, at Vallejo
near the yacht club, of seeing the meeting between Jack and
an old crony or two — as Charley Le Grant, so often men
tioned in "Tales of the Fish Patrol"; and another time,
threading Sonoma Creek's delta of sloughs to the tuneful
sound of blackbirds' throats, into our own valley within eye-
reach of our own mountain fastnesses, to Jack's unbounded
delight we came upon a venerable, rickety little French
Frank of Idler memory, keeper of a duck-hunting club
shack. Debonair and gallant Frank still was, though all his
jealous fires and furies had long since been drawn. And
ludicrously tactful was he, before "Jack's lady," in refer
ences to the wild '90s he and the lady's husband had shared

198 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

in common. Having convinced him I was no ogress his
tongue loosened in spicy reminiscence, abetted by a bottle
of red wine.

What a blissful passage it was, this first Roamer voy
age, only to be surpassed by the second and the third, and
so on. "Snarking once more," Jack named it; honeymoon
ing upon the face of the winding waters; fanning into
Benicia to the sunset melody of birds in the rushes; run
ning across that " large, draughty, variegated piece of
water, " Suisun Bay, where the great scows we had both
learned to respect came charging down, grain-laden; pick
ing our way in the "Middle Ground " channels, and gliding
close-hauled into Black Diamond "in the fires of sunset,
where the Sacramento and the San Joaquin tumble their
muddy floods together"-— to port the hazy, Aztec unreality
of the tawny-rose Montezuma Hills palpitating in the west
ering sunlight ; to starboard the low brown banks with green
upstanding fringes of rustling tules; all about red-sailed
fishing boats homing for the night ; and old Black Diamond's
lazy water-front and lazier streets sloping upward toward
the Contra Costa Hills; and, in the morning, Diablo
crumpled against an azure dome.

Once, off a tree-plumed island in the pictureful delta, a
gay "red-light" barge, with its painted ladies, anchored
within hailing distance of the Roamer. " I '11 take you aboard
to-morrow evening early, if you'd like," Jack volunteered;
and I was glad enough for a new experience with him.
But the next day he was invited by the principal, Professor
Vickers, to speak to the school children of the town across
river, which he consented to do, in a brief talk on "The
Call of the Wild"; and when we were once more aboard,
he said soberly:

"I guess we won't go adventuring next-door to-night,
Mate — it might offend the good people ashore if they found
it out. They wouldn 't understand how you and I go about
together. Also, there might possibly be folks on the barge

YACHT "ROAMER" 199

whom youVe seen about and who wouldn't want you to see
them there. So we'll just give it up and wait for a better
chance. ' '

I think it was about this time Jack illustrated his belief
in the innate goodness of even very low unfortunates, by tell
ing me how, when he was a mere stripling, his pockets had
been rifled by one of the women companions of his associates
up-river. "But do you know — she only took exactly half
of what I had, ' ' he said. l ' I never forgot that. It was bad,
of course, but it was only half-bad at worst, and showed she
had some heart of softness left in her toward a mere boy
like me."

It was while we lay off the town of Antioch, in this
region, that Jack recounted to me the laughable story of
how he and his mates netted a score of illicit fishermen ; but
that is for all to read— " Charley's Coup," in "The Fish
Patrol" group.

Together we came to know the rivers and serpentine
sloughs, with their foreign inhabitants, as Jack had known
them aforetime; only, now, the dwellers upon and behind
the willowed dykes had become increasingly foreign. This
gave rise to many "human drift" speculations upon my
skipper's part, later used in "The Valley of the Moon."
I am reminded in passing, the young hero and his com
rade wife run across a pseudo Roomer and its master and
mate.

Among other features new to Jack, was the growth of
the Japanese-Chinese village of Walnut Grove. Here we
poked about among tortuous roofed streets lined with
gambling dens, stores, geisha houses and tea-shops, enter
tained in these latter by the pretty toy-like women, with
saki, and raw bonita soaked in soyu sauce, to the debatable
harmony of samisens.

Jack, snugly at anchor, his work punctually disposed of,
read intensively upon agriculture, devoured a plunder of
countless old books he had been collecting upon western

200 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Plains migration, and laid deep and deeper foundation for
Ranch development and stock-raising. "I devoted two
solid years," he has written, "to the study of the migra
tions toward the West of America, being moved to it per
haps by the fact that my people came from the Middle
West."

Everywhere he used his eyes, bent upon seeing what the
other fellow was doing in the vast fields of California,
making me the willing repository of his plans as he worked
them out. Often, while I shopped or walked or rowed in
the skiff for exercise, he drifted about the towns, meeting
men, going to their farms, inspecting cattle and horses.
He bought a draft-mare, June, a striking creature, black
and proud, who came to live on the Ranch and become the
mother of several colts.

Jack was living so fully — a life balanced with essential
interests and endeavor and simplest of amusements. The
test, I am sure, he undertook deliberately. To him relaxa
tion consisted not in cessation but in change of thought
and occupation. The vessel all in order, laid against a
river-bank for the night, he would sit, placidly smoking
in the blue dungarees and old tarn, humped comfortably
on deck, his soft-shod feet hanging over the rail, line over
board for cat-fish or black bass. Meanwhile he would argue
for long with Nakata or the cook, in all the ardent simplicity
of a sailor in the fo'c's'le, some trifling point — say relative
sizes of fish each had hooked the day before ; or there would
be a jokingly heated disagreement as to the payment of a
penny wager a week old; or the three, stopping to catch
laughing breath, feverishly laid new bets against the eve
ning's basket. Jack was always ready to chuckle over it all,
should I remind him of his reversion to fo'c's'le methods.

To a Sacramento reporter at this time, Jack said : "I am
a Westerner, despite my English name. I realise that much
of California's romance is passing away, and I intend to see

YACHT "ROAMER" 201

to it that I, at least, shall preserve as much of that romance
as is possible for me. I am making of 'The Valley of the
Moon7 a purely Calif ornian novel — it starts with Oakland
and ends in Sonoma."

He was an unfailing wonder to me, my Jack London —
my mentor — his continuous cerebration to every impact,
mental, physical, awake, and asleep; always young, al
ways old, always wise, with "a bigness of heart that kept
conscience with itself"; efficient dreamer, harnessed to his
work for the sake of Heart's Desire, which included the
discharge of so many responsibilities — penalties of pa
triarchy. How vivid he rises, standing on his handsome
legs at the wheel, those robust, muscle-rounded shoulders
leaning back upon a howling norther before which we fled,
tense, caution on hair-trigger, uncapturable thoughts be
hind his deep, wide eyes, lips parted, and that great chest
expanding to breeze and effort. One man has written me :
"I remember Jack London above all by his beautiful
chest. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

December saw us home at Wake Robin, trying to come
abreast with work that had piled up during the cruise.
" Poor little woman! She has to pay for her fun!" Jack
turned from his desk to where I was filing letters and notes.
"But it's worth it!" Again, suddenly wheeling around,
"How good it is to have a satisfying love. Mate, I love
you more than I ever did in my first days of madness. It's
different — but I love you more." And he had a way of
blowing involuntary kisses in the air when I spoke to him.
How good it all was ! I am reminded of Browning's :

" There's your smile!

Your hand's touch! and the long day that brings
Half -uttered nothings of delight."

While we spent hours poring over the Wolf House draw
ings, twenty men were setting out twenty thousand addi-

202 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

tional eucalyptus. And Jack's funds, despite our bound
less plans, were sinking low.

1 'Well, I've got five hundred dollars in bank, and an
eight-hundred-dollar life-insurance premium due," he an
nounced. " Doesn't balance up very well, does it? But
never fear — * Smoke Belle w' will pull us even with the bills.
Guess we'll accept that invitation from Felix Peano to
move into his Los Angeles house for a month. It'll be a
nice winter change, and I can forget my creditors easier at
a distance, while I'm slaving to pay them!"

He always referred to "Smoke Bellew" as "hack
work," strictly excluding the last story, "Love of Woman,"
which he strove to make one of his best. The "hack"
turned out to be a great favorite with the male readers of
his average public. It would seem that Jack London's
work, third-best, or worse, could never be bad. Light it
might sometimes be, comparatively unimportant; but it
was impossible — reservoir of learning, and imagination,
and emotion that he was — that he should ever turn out
trash.

The Cosmopolitan later asked for a continuation of
"Smoke Bellew," and the while Jack considered its popu
larity in light of means to keep up the enormous expense
of house-building, I suggested sailing Smoke and Shorty
into the South Seas for a series of adventurings, for he had
been longing again to dip his pen into tropic colors. This
he considere'd ; but all at once he threw up the whole thing :

"I'm tired writing pot-boilers ! I won't do another one
unless I have to !" And in March, the twelve off his hands,
he went at the David Grief series, these romances, ' ' crack
er jacks," Jack referred to them, being issued as "A Son
of the Sun."

So January, 1911, was spent in the Westlake District
of Los Angeles, while "Smoke Bellew" went forward, and
chance visitors were regaled with readings from the man
uscript. We took along our two Japanese, and had my

YACHT "ROAMER" 203

Aunt, now Mrs. Edward B. Payne, and her husband, as
house-guests. It was a very jolly arrangement — we, ac
cepting our sculptor-friend's roomy house, he, our hospi
tality of table and service. Jack's thirty-fifth birthday
was celebrated in this pleasant cottage. Besides entertain
ing, our amusements numbered much attendance at the
theaters, swimming in the city's salt tanks, a captive bal
loon ascension, canoeing on Westlake hard by, feeding
the swans and reading aloud, and a run to Santa Catalina
Island. On this last excursion Jack said my Aunt and
her husband must go with us — she having visited the big
island with my own mother long before I was born.

One of my commissions while south was to look up a
suitable four-in-hand of light horses for a summer trip to
northern California and Oregon. I succeeded in obtaining
a trio, more or less ill-assorted, which was shipped home.
Upon our own return, Jack had up from Glen Ellen his
old friend "Bill" Ping — mentioned in more than one of his
books — to consult about reinforcing the Winship two-
seated "cut-under," for the heavy going, and the proper
harness. Mr. Ping, one of the splendid passing type of
old-time stage-drivers, who in his day had tooled his six on
the Overland Trail, was sent to San Francisco to order
harness; also a whip with an eleven-foot lash which Jack,
after a surprisingly short trial, learned to crack with a
brave report, but seldom used.

Mr. Ping being busy with his own affairs, another stage
driver, of a 'younger generation, was hired to put the*
team in shape and instruct us in the gentle art of guiding
its four mouths and sixteen wayward feet. Jack, as al
ways, mastered the thing perfectly, knowing, move by
move, precisely how he did it; while I, to his laughing,
almost mocking admiration, "got the hang of it" by way
of emulation and my "horse instinct," doing it well one
day and not so well the next.

204 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

The Lily Maid was one of our guests in March, and Jack
never appeared to better advantage than in his kindness
to her, still pleasuring in her mantle of yellow English
hair. For her health was but poorly, and when she could
not come to table, with Jack's own hands Nakata's nicely
appointed trays were carried to one of the little woodsy
guest-cabins we had built.

We had formulated a printed slip that frequently went
into Jack's correspondence along with socialist and agri
cultural folders, reading as follows :

"We live in a beautiful part of the country, about two hours
from San Francisco by two routes, the Southern Pacific and the
Northwestern Pacific.

"Both trains (or boats connecting with trains) leave San Fran
cisco about 8 a. m.

"The p. m. Southern Pacific train (boat) leaves San Francisco
about 4 o'clock.

"The p. m. Southern Pacific train can be connected with at
16th Street Station, Oakland, also.

"If you come in the afternoon, it is more convenient for us if
you take the Southern Pacific route, as it arrives here in time for
our supper. We usually ask our guests to dine on the boat, if
they come by the Northwestern Pacific.

"Write (or telephone) in advance of your coming, because we
are frequently away from home. Also, if we are at home, word
from you will make it so we can have a rig at the station to meet
you.

"Be sure to state by what rouiey and by what train, you will
arrive.

' ' Our life here is something as follows :

1 ' We rise early, and work in the forenoon. Therefore, we do not
see our guests until afternoons and evenings. You may breakfast
from 7 till 9, and then we all get together for dinner at 12:30.
You will find this a good place to work, if you have work to do.
Or if you prefer to play, there are horses, saddles, and rigs. In
the summer we have a swimming pool.

"We have not yet built a house of our own, and are living in

YACHT "ROAMER" 205

a small house adoining our ranch. So our friends are put up in
little cabins near by, to sleep."

I have come across a verse by Foss, which so expresses
Jack's deep heart of hospitality that I steal space to
quote :

"Let me live in a house by the side of the road,

Where the race of men goes by

The men who are good and the men who are bad,

As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat,

Or hurl the cynic's ban

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man."

He was always buying blankets; never so happy as
when all the beds were full. His heart was soft, and all
were treated alike — friend, stranger, of whatsoever estate.
I remember the pleased look that crossed his face when I
related how, while I was buying a riding suit in a San
Francisco shop, the fitter said to me :

"Mrs. Jack London? — Oh, I heard something so lovely
about your place — that no one, even when you people are
not home, is ever allowed to go away without being en
tertained!"

It was in October Jack placed in my hands the story of
his wayward flight across the continent, "The Road/' The
inscription is one of his most generous :

"Dearest My Woman: —

"Whose efficient hands I love — the hands that have worked for
me long hours and many, swiftly and deftly, and beautifully in the
making of music, the hands that have steered the Snark through
wild passages and rough seas, that do not tremble on a trigger,
that are sure and strong on the reins of a Thoroughbred or of an
untamed Marquesan stallion ; the hands that are sweet with love as
they pass through my hair, firm with comradeship as they grip
mine, and that soothe as only they of all hands in the world can
sootne- "Your Man and Lover,"

206 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Of course many calls were made upon Jack's time and
purse. And " purse " reminds me that he never carried
other than the slender chamois gold-dust sack that he had
learned to use in the Klondike. He was obliged to work
out circular letters to cover such exigencies as he was un
able to comply with. Here is an example in a copy of a
letter written to a young writer :

' * In reply to yours of recent date undated and returning here
with your Manuscript. First of all let me tell you that, as a psy
chologist and as one who has been through the mill, I enjoyed your
story for its psychology and point of view. Honestly and frankly,
I did not enjoy it for its literary charm or value. In the first
place, it has little literary value and practically no literary charm.
Merely because you have got something to say that may be of inter
est to others does not free you from making all due effort to express
that something in the best possible medium and form. Medium and
form you have utterly neglected.

1 ' Anent the foregoing paragraph ; what is to be expected of any
lad ot twenty, without practice, in knowledge of medium and form ?
Heavens on earth, boy, it would take you five years to serve your
apprenticeship and become a skilled blacksmith. Will you dare
to say that you have spent, not five years, but as much as five
months of unimpeachable, unremitting toil in trying to learn the
artisan's tools of a professional writer who can sell his stuff to the
magazines and receive hard cash for same ? Of course you cannot ;
you have not done it. And yet you should be able to reason on the
face of it that the only explanation for the fact that successful
writers receive such large fortunes is because very few who desire
to write become successful writers. If it takes five years' work to
become a skilled blacksmith how many years of work intensified
into nineteen hours a day, so that one year counts for five, —
how many years of such work, studying medium and form, art
and artisanship, do you think a man, with native talent and some
thing to say, requires in order to reach a place in the world of
letters where he receives a thousand dollars cash iron money per
week?

"I think you get the drift of the point I am trying to make.
If a fellow harnesses himself to a star of $1000 a week he has to

YACHT "ROAMER" 207

work proportionately harder than if he harnesses himself to a
little glowworm of $20 a week. The only reason there are more
successful blacksmiths in the world than successful writers is that
it is much easier, and requires far less hard work, to become a suc
cessful blacksmith than does it to become a successful writer.

1 ' It cannot be possible that you, at twenty, should have done the
work at writing that would merit you success in writing. You have
not begun your apprenticeship yet. The proof of it is the fact
that you dared to write this manuscript, * ' A Journal of One Who is
to Die.' Had you made any sort of study of what is published in
the magazines you would have found that your short story was of
the sort that never was published in the magazines. If you are
going to write for success and money you must deliver to the
market marketable goods. Your short story is not marketable
goods, and had you taken half a dozen evenings off and gone into a
free reading room and read all the stories published in the current
magazines you would have learned in advance that your short
story was not marketable goods.

"There's only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin ;
and begin with hard work, patience, prepared for all the disap
pointments that were Martin Eden's before he succeeded — which
were mine before I succeeded — because I merely appended to my
fictional character, Martin Eden, my own experiences in the writ
ing game.

"Jack London/'

The next letter here appended, he used to send out be
fore he came to decide to read every manuscript that came
his way, and encourage the sending to him. He found that
in refusing to avail of such opportunities, he was depriv
ing himself of just so many chances to study the wayward
seed of man :

" Every time a writer tells the truth about a manuscript (or
book), to a friend-author, he loses that friend, or sees that friend
ship dim and fade away to a ghost of what it was formerly.

" Every time a writer tells the truth about a manuscript (or
book), to a stranger-author, he makes an enemy.

208 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"If the writer loves his friend and fears to lose him, he lies to
his friend.

"But what's the good of straining himself to lie to strangers?

"And, with like insistence, what's the good of making enemies
anyway ?

' ' Furthermore, a known writer is overwhelmed by requests from
strangers to read work and pass judgment upon it. This is proper
ly the work of a literary bureau. A writer is not a literary bureau.
If he is foolish enough to become a literary bureau, he will cease
to be a writer. He won't have any time to write.

"Also, as a charitable literary bureau, he will receive no pay.
Wherefore he will soon be bankrupt, and himself live upon the
charity of his friends (if he has not already made them all enemies
by telling them the truth), while he will behold his wife and chil
dren wend their melancholy way to the poorhouse.

"Sympathy for the struggling unknown is all very well. It is
beautiful — but there are so many struggling unknowns, some
thing like several millions of them. And sympathy can be worked
too hard. Sympathy begins at home. The writer would far rather
allow the multitudinous unknowns to remain unknown, than allow
his near and dear ones to occupy pauper pallets and potter 's fields.

"Sincerely yours,

"Jack London/'

In extreme cases, I have known him to send out copies
of Richard Le Gallienne's " Letter to an Unsuccessful Lit
erary Man," a document that leaves little to be said.

Requests for money usually found his responsive. He
used some discernment, however, declining to be " touched "
too often by certain men who took Mm more freely for
granted than he liked; with some others, he blithely kissed
hand to his dollars when telling me of his gifts and " loans."
And

"Oh, well, Mate — money's only good for what it can
buy. It buys me happiness to buy happiness for others.
Don't hoard money. You can't take it with you when you
go into the dark ' J — that was a concept he had inculcated for
all time into the rapidly simplifying philosophy that had

YACHT "KOAMER" 209

followed his " opening of the books. " The disadvantageous,
soul-belittling influence of poverty had been practically
banished for the span of his existence on this competitive
planet. I smile as I handle the cancelled checks of many
dates, to hear that husky, half -apologe tic : "They've all
dreamed their dream. Who am I not to help, now that I
can. And these have realized their dream only a little
less, after all, than the rest of mankind. . . . But it does
give me joy," with a smile into my eyes, "when what my
money does for others receives some little appreciation of
the pleasure or comfort it buys!"

In mid- April the Eoamer all "ship-shape and Bristol
fashion" from Nakata's deft brown hands, sailed on a
month's cruise, while Eliza superintended architect and
house construction, and colts and calves increased, and
orchard and house-vineyard took root in the gentle ter
raced amphitheater behind the rising red-stone pile that
was to be our castle.

During this absence, Eliza saw her chance to buy, at
a price her brother had been waiting for, a section of
some twelve acres right in the heart of the big Kohler
ranch already ours, on which stood the buildings large and
small of the old Kohler and Frohling winery of other days,
all in sad but picturesque disrepair from neglect topped
with the Great Earthquake.

This out-door life was the best thing that could
happen to Jack, who had been suffering from one severe
cold after another, coupled with repeated sties on his
eyelids, and much nerve-rack from his teeth — this last, of
course, being nothing unusual. I marvel to think of his
eternal patience with pain; probably he was never, for
years at a time, free from pain or at least discomfort.
And there was his ever present joy in my own good teeth
— "Woman!" he would cry, "you don't know how lucky
you are!"

Before launching out for the coast on our northern

210 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

trek, Jack asked me, what I had been anticipating for
some time:

"Do you think we could fix up that old cottage on the
Kohler, to live in until the Wolf House is done!"

It was a six-room, one-story frame house once occupied
by the heads of the winery, and now in a shocking state.
Subsequent Italian lessees of the vineyard had made a
veritable dump of it and its old garden of foreign trees
and shrubbery. I was dubious enough to reply :

"Honestly, I don't think we can."

But my partner had, for once, evidently made up his
mind before consulting me, and presently I entered into
the spirit of making the place as attractive as possible.
Besides, it was, at worst, a consummation of our mutual
desire to live in the very center of the Ranch activities
now afoot.

The cottage came to be our sleeping and working quar
ters, including two guest-rooms, while in one side of the
enormous winery were built others; workmen's family
quarters being created on the other, and a new roof shingled
over all.

Quite a ceremonial it was with the Japanese, getting
ready Jack's bedside table for the night. Sharp pencils
there must be plenty, scratch pads, big and little; many
packages of ' ' Imperiales, " and fine Korean brass ash
tray; his ubiquitous little red-velvet pin-cushion with pins
driven in to their heads; files of papers and magazines
neatly arranged on a lower section of the table, according
to dates, the latest on top; a dish of fruit, or, lacking fruit,
of some favorite dried fish or other "dainty." And
finally, there were no less than three bottles of liquid of
one sort or another. For Jack always maintained that
it was a mercy, with his almost uninterrupted smoking, the
alcohol he consumed, and certain sedentary spells when
he took little exercise, that he "breathed through the skin"
— by which he meant free perspiring. Therefore, he drank

YACHT "ROAMER" 211

almost excessive quantities of this and that favorite bev
erage — grapejuice, buttermilk, and endless draughts of
water. These, according to the whim, in cool thermos bot
tles, stood in an inviting row on the bedside table, and were
always empty in the morning.

Papers and magazines, ravished of whatever in the way
of information he wished to file as notes, were flung upon
the floor; letters, envelopes, all small matter that was
finished with, he carefully crumpled lest Nakata or the
house-boy should put them back where he would have to
handle them again. Sometimes, dropping off to sleep, cig
arette between his lips, he singed his curls, exploded a
celluloid eyeshade, or burned small round holes in sheet or
pillow. As for pillows, he liked them large, three of them,
with a very small one for that left elbow which supported
him so many, many hours.

This dwelling was the only one of his very own in which
Jack London ever lived — and in which he continued to live
until he died within its old book-lined walls. It was into
this house we moved upon our return from the four-horse
adventure, which began in early June and ended in early
September, 1911.

CHAPTER XXXIV

FOUE-HOESE DEIVING-TEIP ; NEW YOEK CITY
1911

FROM Glen Ellen to the Coast, and north to Bandon,
Oregon, was our route ; thence inland to Medf ord and
Ashland, and southward through the interior — fifteen hun
dred miles altogether. Jack wrote forenoons before start
ing out, and our average drive was thirty miles. "Four
Horses and a Sailor, " written primarily for a Northern
Counties promotion object, published in Sunset Magazine
(collected in "The Human Drift "), is based upon this
summer's journeying, as is also the wagon-travel episode
in "The Valley of the Moon."

We did not camp. Before ever Jack London and I came
to "hunt in pairs" he had had enough "roughing" to last
out his life, and our migrations were invariably attended
by one or more helpers. Nakata packed, put up lunches, on
hottest afternoons hoisted the big brown sunshade that
clamped to the back of the driver's seat, kept our
"gear" in order and sometimes assisted in harnessing the
antic four-footed quartet, I typed Jack's manuscript on a
small machine, and he steadily ground out the wherewithal
for our subsistence as well as the big things left doing at
home. Watching him in this phase, exhilarated with the
youth and beauty of the summer world of out-doors, I
caught myself thinking of him as driving a team of stars ;
for he harnessed the very stars to do his work — his lines
reaching to the stuff of which the stars are made.

But sometimes, as more often on days when I was not

212

FOUB-HOBSE DEIVING-TEIP 213

so bright as usual (I drove little, finding my strength was
not quite equal to the weight of those long leathers in my
hands for hours on end) furtively I watched Jack's face;
and there was that in it I had never seen before the death
of our child. It made more difference to him than any one,
even I, then realized. On the evenings of such days, our
goal reached, horses properly housed, and hotel or farm
accommodations made sure, he was most likely to drift off
alone down-street, looking for " inhibitions ' ' — a word he
worked a great deal at the time — of man-talk, new associa
tion, and an extra glass or two. When he would return,
there was a more than common glisten in his always lus
trous eyes, a trifle of feverishness in the telling of what he
had picked up in the way of local information or backwoods
lore, a super-enthusiasm about the newest antlers of elk
or deer for which he was bargaining, or the bearskin so-
and-so had promised to bring for my inspection.

For a period of two or three years after the baby's loss,
which included a second unlooked-for disappointment, my
health was not of the best ; but I was wary to avoid giving
any possible impression to Jack that I linked my lack of
freshness in any way with maternal misfortunes. I had
early discovered that the slightest suggestion of such a
thing irritated him instantly and beyond sympathy. He
was as automatically touchy about this as he was concern
ing hysteria. Not much would he say, but his few words
had showed me that he harbored a deep-rooted, resentful
opinion that the majority of womenfolk held their men
responsible for all the consequences of reproduction !

Beside a number of the David Grief episodes, Jack wrote
among other stories "The Prodigal Father, " and "By the
Turtles of Tasman" (both in "The Turtles of Tasman"),
"The End of the Story," and "The Mexican " (in "The
Night Born").

Much he enjoyed the horses-— their characters and ca-

214 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

prices: Prince, his sugar-tongue hanging out on all occa
sions, Prince the " Love-Horse, " Jack called him, with his
laughing eye and friendly hoof-shake and the pocket-seek
ing of his mischievous muzzle ; Sonoma Maid, the excellent
and wise; Gert the irascible outlaw who yet did her work
and came to bury all the other three when Jack himself had
gone ; and Hilda, variously dubbed the Eabbit, the Bat, the
Manger-Glutton — Milda, who asked nothing of anybody but
to let her do her work and win to her supper by the least
circuitous route.

For the sake of any who would care to follow in our
track, I briefly outline the same. But first, there was a trial-
trip of one week from Glen Ellen to Petaluma; thence to
Olima on Tamales Bay ; Point Eeyes, and the Light House,
Willow Camp on the coast; from there on the wonderful
coast drive and across Mt. Tamalpais' feet to Mill Valley.
The long uninterrupted trip was as follows :

Glen Ellen to Santa Eosa, and Sebastopol where one
sees Luther Burbank's flowering and fruiting fields, to Bo
dega Corners ; Duncan's Mills ; Cazadero ; Fort Eoss, on the
coast, of historic interest ; Gualala — where one may fish and
boat on the river; Greenwood; Fort Bragg; Hardy; Usal;
Moody 's; Garberville; thence along Eel Eiver, where deer
come down to drink, to Dyerville. From this section the
tourist may cut inland to the Hoopah Indian Eeservation.
This we did, by automobile and saddle, coming out down the
Trinity and Klamath Eivers in a dugout with Indian ca-
noemen to Eequa by the sea ; next, to Fortuna, with fishing
and hunting and old Indians along the way; Eureka; Trini
dad; Kirkpatrick's. Crescent City, in the northwest corner
of California, where one gathers jewels, agates of marvelous
colorings, in the ocean sands; on to Smith Eiver Corners,
and into Oregon, to Colgrove 's Mountain Eanch ; Laurence 's
on Pistol Eiver; Gold Beach, on Eogue Eiver; Port Orford;
Langlois ; then to Bandon, Coos County, whence we struck
inland to Coquille; Eock Creek; Murray's, Eoseburg; Can-

FOUE-HOESE DEIVING-TEIP 215

yonville ; Wolf Creek ; Grant's Pass ; Medford, with a motor
trip to that marvel, Crater Lake ; Ashland ; down into Cali
fornia again, — Montague; Weed; driving within sight of
grand Mt. Shasta; Dunsmuir; Le Moyne; Kennett; Eed-
ding; Eed Bluff; Orland; Willows; Maxwell; Leesville;
Lower Lake; Middleton; Calistoga — and home to Glen
Ellen by way of the Petrified Forest.

One sparkling afternoon on the Bay of Eureka, I had
an opportunity to observe my husband in a crucial moment
of judgment and fearlessness. What a ringing challenge
that man was to the courage of all (except the spiritually
deaf, dumb, and blind), who were privileged to know him!
How seldom he ever reached into his own vocabulary for
the word fear! Burned into my memory is something he
said early in our comradeship :

"I think I am really afraid of but thing — being hit over
the head from behind. — Oh, not from fear of death — never !
But to live with my brain addled — it 's unthinkable ! ' '

It was our pastime, while visiting in a luxurious house
boat, to go fishing or to sail down the harbor and, if not
too rough, cross the bar and cruise a little way toward the
blue Pacific horizon that was forever a receding Paradise.
On this day, tacking up-bay on the satin swell, a big rakish
power-launch, full speed ahead, came bearing down upon
us. There was plenty of room, and Jack, knowing the sail
boat's traditional right of way, naturally kept on his
course, expecting to pass the other to port. But her pilot
kept right on for us, and to avoid being sliced squarely
amidship, Jack in a flash spun his wheel to starboard, to
bring her up into the wind, while the other, who must
have been dreaming, suddenly with terrified face swerved to
his left and took with him the starboard corner of our stern
rail.

It all happened in the space of three seconds, but there
remains, snap, snap, one of the sharpest moving-pictures
in my experience. At the last least instant, with the high

216 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

knife-edge bow right upon us, I, the first law of existence
automatically superseding any sentimental desire to be
cloven in twain even in company with the spouse of my
bosom, had jumped just forward of where the crash would
occur. Turning as instantly as I landed, ready to dive if
necessary, I took in Jack's incredibly quick action with the
wheel, his cool, calm, fighting face, and heard, saw, and felt
the splintering of the rail.

"You did exactly the right thing,'' he reassured my
tentative inquiry. ' ' I had my hands full, and did not have
to worry about you. I had to stay at the wheel and do the
only thing that could be done to save the sloop. . . . Some
day, though," and he more than once warned me of this,
"my curiosity in seeing the thing through is going to be my
finish!" But I always banked on his mental and steel-
springed physical alertness to save himself just short of
annihilation.

So I rested fairly comfortably upon his opinion that I
had done "the right thing," until one day in his Bad Year,
1913, when he, in a dreadful depth, brought up the action.
It followed upon something I had just done. We had been
driving behind a wicked roan gelding, of irreproachable
breeding, who bore an evil reputation for running away
and smashing things — several on the Kanch, including
Eliza, had at various times been thrown out and injured.
The horse, this afternoon, had balked, and plunged sidewise,
cramping the buggy until the wheels cracked. Unless I
could have the reins in my own hands, I preferred being in
Jack's care to any driver I knew — so expert had he become.
But we were in a tight pinch, and without warning I sprang
to the ground and to the animal's head to straighten him
out. It was wrong, I admit, and mortifying to the driver.
I should have stayed beside him and "seen it through," as
I had before and many times afterward. It was the cap
stone to a series of vexations to Jack, ending in one of his
superb "disgusts" with the universe of which I was an

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 217

important part; and lie brought up the Eureka incident.

' i But I know I am not a coward, ' ' I remonstrated to an
accusation he had not voiced but which smoldered in his
purple eyes. "And you know it, too, you! IVe nerves,
but never cowardice !"

Jack's retractions and apologies, generous if rare, were
among the sweetest of the silken ties that bound us forever.
And, looking back over it all, the two utterances of his that
now mean the most to me are his early "You are more kin
to me than any one I have ever known, " and this next,
apropos of I know not what, in the last conversation we
were ever to hold — suddenly, as if from a full heart:
"Thank God, you are not afraid of anything! "

Once more, on September 6, we took up the round at
home — replete with all that love, keen interest in life, work,
and friends could bring. Jack began the day with a few
moments in the garden:

"Gorgeous, tropic flowers!" he would murmur delight
edly over the flaunting goldfish, their long tails waving like
lazy veils in the sunny water of the pool, its fountain bowl
an old Indian stone mortar. "And how I love the all-night
drip and plash of your tiny fountain ! ' '

He cared less for flowers in general than most men do,
or are willing to own. His was joy in a single bloom. If
he was caught momentarily by a mass of blossoms, it would
be for a definite idea connected with it — perhaps that it was
in my arms, and gave me pleasure ; or that it enhanced me
in some way. I can see him at his desk near a doorway,
writing, interrupted by the flame of my basketful of poppies
or rosies crossing his vision, coloring the sunlight. And
the glance would rest, and dwell, and soften — his deep-gray,
wide eyes full of the love that was my wonder and glory
and guerdon.

Everything was in full swing on the Ranch, and guests '
voices were in the air.

218 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"This is what I like," Jack would pause in a dictation
to me at the typewriter. ' ' While we are together, carrying
on our work, they can do whatever they want. Look — I
love the rail out there under the oak, with our horses tied,
saddled and waiting. And there go two lovers on horse
back for the trails ; and a married pair for a hike. Others
are playing cards in the living room, where I shall join
them as soon as this letter is finished. . . And if you don't
mind, Mate," his eyes begging the favor, "you take the
crowd that's coming for dinner, over the Wolf House trail,
because I have just got to get even with George for the wal
loping he gave me at pedro last night! — Listen to those
girls chattering up in the fig-tree — and who 's practising on
the piano? Mate, do you really know how I love it all!"
To this day, as a friend said, the house "still breathes of
the sweetness of you two toward each other."

Some notes for future work, made about this time, il
lustrate how simple was his initial preparation:

"Series of Stories.

"Why not write a superb short story from each of a number
of diverse places, and collect in book-form under some suitable title
that conveys the idea ' from all the world. ' ? ' The Purple Sea' might
make a good title. ' '

"Novel.

"Why not a series of past and future novels? For No. 1, I
could use 'Before Adam;' No. 2, 'Christ Novel;' No. 3, 'The Mid
dle Ages;' No. 4, some great proletarian-bourgeoise conflict story
of the present; No. 5, 1 could use 'The Iron Heel;' No. 6, 'The Far
Future,' the perfected and perishing human race."

"Farthest Distant.

"Radium engines, etc., for energy, — See Atoms and Evolution,
in Saleeby's 'The Cycle of Life.'

"Collision of dark body from out of space (not large), one-
tenth size of sun. And earth learns of coming by perturbations of
outer planet. Then rush the earth away from the sun.

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 219

"When earth travels through space, all must be inclosed; and
they must use stored heat of some sort. The oceans freeze, etc. A
great preparation. See Direction of Motion chapter by Herbert
Spencer. The initial momentum they have. The momentum in a
straight line that is altered to a curve around the sun by the pole
of the sun. Nullify the pole of the sun, select the right moment,
and sail off into space to reach nearest neighbor sun. They make
some mistakes the first time. Something goes wrong with the ma
chinery, and they dash around the second sun like a comet and
return to the old sun. They figure it out on the way, do not check
at old sun, and like a comet return to new sun, where they suc
ceed in checking."

The material for the Christ novel above referred to
Jack had been compiling for years; but in the Christ epi
sode of "The Star Rover " he concentrated his long-sought
data. When he read me, aboard the Roomer, that chapter
of " The Star Rover, " I asked him what of the Christ novel.
"This will suffice, " he said. "I shall not do the longer
work. ' '

Jesus Christ and Abraham Lincoln were names of praise
upon his lips. Tolstoy said of Lincoln that be was a Christ
in miniature. Jack London: "The two men I reverence
most are Christ and Lincoln," and spoke of them with shin
ing, worshipful eyes. And Stephen French sends me the
following from a letter Jack wrote him: "I don't know
whether Jesus Christ was a myth or not; but taking him
just as I find him, just as I read him, I have two heroes —
one is Jesus Christ, the other Abraham Lincoln."

Our main meal was at 12 :30. This hour better suited
our work and Ranch plans generally. At twelve the mail-
sack — a substantial leather one bought before we sailed on
the Snark — arrived at the back porcb, and Nakata brought
it to me to sort tbe contents. In the half-hour before din
ner, Jack had glanced over the daily paper, read his letters,
indicated replies on some of them for my guidance, and

220 THE BOOK OP JACK LONDON

laid the more important ones in their wire tray, one of
many such nested on a small table beside the Oregon myrtle
rolltop desk where he transacted business. I always en
deavored to have his ten pages of hand-written manuscript
transcribed — an average of two and a half typewritten let
ter-size sheets — before the second gong (an ancient concave
disk of Korean brass) belled the fifteen-minute call to table.
Jack implored me to be on time to the minute's tick, and
attend to seating the guests, so that he might work to the
last moment.

In many minds, I am sure, still lives the vision of the
hale, big-hearted man of God's out-of-doors, the beardless
patriarch, his curls rumpled, like as not the green visor
unremoved, pattering with that quick, light step along the
narrow vine-shaded porch, through the screened doorway
and the length of the tapa-brown room to his seat in the
solid red koa chair at the head of the table. "Here comes a
real man ! ' ' was the prevailing sentiment.

How he doted upon that board with its long double-row
of friendly faces turned in greeting, ever ready with an
other plate and portion! It was his ideal — carried from
old days with the Strunskys*. "In Jack's house," one
writes me, "I met the most interesting people of my life
and of the world." And perhaps, while we fell to our por
tions, before his own was tasted he would read aloud news
paper items or newly received letters ; or he might launch
out in a fine rage of his eternal enthusiasm, upon some
theme that claimed him, or strike into argument, whipped
hot out of his seething brain and heart. Always there was
in him the potent urge to gather all about him into knowl
edge of whatever claimed his attention. Years only added
to his capacity to function in every potentiality. There
were no numb or inactive surfaces in his make-up, men
tally, physically. He reached in all directions, to play, to
work, to thought, to sensation. His face, smiling, cracked
with thought-wrinkles, weather-wrinkles, laughter-wrinkles.

FOUE-HOESE DEIVING-TEIP 221

At no time did he have more than a few gray hairs ; and his
hands, to his pride, were very firm, showing no dilated ar
teries. "One is as young as one's arteries, " he was fond
of saying. How he would pluck at the air with those young
hands, in unconscious pantomime groping for illustration
for the means that no man born of woman has ever been
able to command by which to express a complete concept.

Many were more impressed by his eyes than any other
feature or characteristic. "All steel and dew," one man
wrote of them. "All sweetness and hidden ferocity . . .
as though they masked profound and terrible secrets . . .
eyes common enough, mayhap, when the world was young.
. . . Alert, as though to him life were a constant battle
field."

They were eyes that look into one, and through and be
yond — as if what they saw on the surface, in one 's own, led
his into the deeps behind, into the brain, conscious and un
conscious and far behind again into the intelligence of the
race down through all the drift of the human. Gray,
or iris-blue, they were when mild, the large pupils giving
them a splendid, brilliant darkness; but let him be angry,
instantly they went cold, metallic, the enormous pupils nar
rowing to bitter points.

He had a way, sometimes, in common with his sister, of
apparently not listening while his eyes looked through one,
patently seeing beyond. "You haven't heard a word!"
I would remonstrate. "Oh, yes, I have," he would return,
and repeat a sentence or two. "That doesn't prove any
thing," I would challenge. "No, my dear, I will give you
your whole argument, " and he would disprove my assertion.

Another likeness of Jack's to Eliza was expressed by a
woman who had heard her speak in public: "When others
get up and talk, we listen to what they say; when you get
up and talk, we do what you say!"

How his "living language" of colloquialisms and slang
pierces time when we call up the arguments that flew about

222 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the table like missiles in a game! "Come on, now — let's
tell sad stories of the deaths of kings ! — Go to it ; the day
is young, and we're a long time dead!" "Oh, it's only my
shorthand, ' ' he would mourn, cutting short to a conclusion,
speaking to blank faces, perhaps. Or, when he had perhaps
let himself go on some subject near his heart: "You miss
me — you miss me totally," in distressed tone to a solemn
egotist who had dared his logic ; or, " There you go — trying
to pass the buck; now stick to the point." Or, "Ah — ah —
but you've missed the factors. Connotations, man, factors !"
Then, "Still well, but not so well." Parsimonious was a
word he enjoyed for a time : " I 'm parsimonious ! " he would
cry in a discussion, "You'll have to show me — I don't be
lieve anything till I'm shown. I'm parsimonious!" "But
to get back : As I was saying when I was so rudely inter
rupted," with a twinkle; "I'm afraid I was always an ex
tremist; so don't mind my violence." And suddenly, in the
face of non-understanding: "I'm boring you?" "Piffle!"
he would exclaim, full-tilt ; and irascibly, ' ' Silly ! You mean
to say, then . . . ?" Showing up the muddlement of a
wrathful and impotent opponent. " No ? Then what do you
mean to say? We must agree upon a working vocabulary
for a basis." "What do I think about so and so? Well,
if anybody should .drive up in a hack and ask me, I'd
say ..." When something was well said or done, he
might praise, "Fine and dandy!" or "Booful, my dear!"
But always he hewed to the core of the truth of things, and
his meanings were clear to any who would clearly listen.
Some poet has expressed my own sentiment :

"... well I love to see

That gracious smile light up your face, and hear
Your wonderful words, that all mean verily
The thing they seem to mean."

Once Jack wrote me : ' * Kemember, dear, not only in being
true to myself am I true to you, but before I knew you I was

FOUR-HOESE DEIVING-TEIP 223

true to myself. I have always been true to myself. This
is my highest concept of right conduct. It is my measure
of right conduct. "

One prejudiced person, who rather against his will had
been brought by a mutual acquaintance, had this to say:

"That friend of yours, Jack London, is all and more
than you said. He made me love him even when I quar
reled with him. Why, he is a marvel — I never saw his
like."

Another remembered Jack, the comrade-man, arm
around the shoulder of a friend:

"At times he was funnily boyish, then in a flash splen
didly exalted, pouring forth in his glad way his knowledge
of life, his love of life, his sympathy with life, his creative
force, his open-minded embrace of the most vital in life;
he, life itself, impregnated by ripeness of thought and feel
ing most unusual for his years. ' ' And still again : ' l What
a warmth there was about this dear fellow! Sunshine fol
lowed him everywhere. . . . Even in his harshest moments,
his fine, open smile would burst forth. Never have I seen
such faith, resultant of research and understanding, cou
pled with such doubt of the purely dreamy optimistic or
the unproven."

To the youngsters of his race, entranced with his genu
ineness and utter lack of swank, "He was a prince !" And
one associate honored him with this: "Jack London was
a great man ; but his friends loved him just the same. ' y

So much for his own countrymen ; and how I wish the
English, in greater numbers, could have known him per
sonally. One, who had and appreciated that privilege,
said: "I had to come to his own land to hear a word in
his disfavor — though I will say it came not from any who
knew him at first hand. ' '

One illuminating little flare of Jack's burns up in mem
ory. Some one at table used the contraction " Frisco, "

224 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

and a very young miss rushed headlong into trouble with
her host: "Oh, don't say Frisco! Say San Francisco!"

Jack landed full wroth into the breach :

"Let Frisco alone, you! We love the western tang of
it, we oldsters who knew her by that name before you were
dry behind the ears! — Frisco, Frisco . . ." he rolled it
sweetly on his tongue. And mingled in the fiber of his
tone were scorn and pity for the greenness of her who
jeered at what seemed to her the common crudity of a
sobriquet the very glorious roughness of which symbol
ized what the old town had stood for of romance in the
days Jack London had known, so dear to all who knew it
then. He would seldom go far out of his way to pronounce
correctly a foreign word: "You know what I mean, don't
you? — that's the main thing !"

Despite that Jack London was an excellent subject, and
was widely photographed, many have written to know of
his appearance and proportions. Among some forgotten
souvenirs I have come upon a typewritten record, made up
at Jack's suggestion, of our comparative measurements.
His are appended:

JACK

Height 5 ft. 9 in.

Above knee 15i^> in.

Below knee 12^ in.

Calf 14 in.

Ankle 8% in.

Wrist 61/2 in.

Forearm 11 in.

Biceps (relaxed) 12 in.

Biceps (tensed) 13 in.

Neck : .14% in.

Chest 40 in.

Waist 36 in.

Size of Hat 7% in.

Size of Shoe . . . Number 7

B

I*

E* .

II

N

K <
O P
CUB

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 225

Near the end of the midday meal, Nakata would lay be
side my plate a note-pad and pencil, upon which it was my
daily task to figure the horses, saddles, bridles, and riding
costumes of transient guests from two to a dozen — and, in
season, as many swimming-suits beside. Or, the four-in-
hand would be wanted, and in his wide stiff-rim Stetson,
white soft shirt and khaki trousers, Jack, noisy, gay, swing
ing the jingling, fleeing leaders hither and thither in his
blossoming valley, would be seen pointing out the beauties
of it to a packed wagonful of rapt, if sometimes apprehen
sive, men and women and children, enlarging to them upon
the character and idiosyncracies of each horse. A neigh
boring editor saw him — "Big, boyish, warm-hearted . . .
Over our hills with the sunshine of his favorite vale shining
upon his head he often rode or drove in carefree style the
beautiful horses he loved. His manner cordial, his greeting
cheery, it was little wonder he became the pal of all, and no
matter how big his triumphs he was never the conceited
genius but always the genial friend and natural neighbor. ' '

As Jack himself put it: "I'm so afraid of slighting
somebody I ought to recognize in the neighborhood, that
I'm going to speak in good old country fashion to every
body I meet ! ' ' which became his habit ; and many the prim
provincial lady, loitering in her dusty old buggy under the
hot midsummer sky, who sat up suddenly from daydreams
to stare, first, at the abounding good cheer of the robust
young driver avalanching by, and tipping a gray cow
boy brim so respectfully; and, next, to melt into smiles
under the warmth of the neighborly apparition.

That year the Sierra Club made its first pilgrimage to
the Jack London Ranch. Also it marked the employment,
of Jack's first paroled man from the State Penitentiary at
San Quentin. Jack's principles in general, and in particu
lar his own Buffalo experience, had for years made him
eager to give a chance to those unfortunate enough to have

226 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

come inside the forbidding gray battlements so often seen
from the deck of the Roamer. For years, on our place,
these men came and went. As for his opinion of amelior
ating prison conditions, he wrote :

"I have little faith in prison reform. Prisons are
merely a symptom. When you try to reform them, you
try to reform symptoms. The disease remains. "

One sojourner with us, as houseguest, was Ed. Morrell,
whose astounding experience, growing out of his connec
tion with the notorious outlaws, Sontag and Evans, was
the motif for Jack's subsequent novel, "The Star Rover. "
I well recall Jack, fairly frothing over the straitjacket
scars Morrell had been revealing, lurching in, spilling over
with emotion, to tell me what he had seen.

While the foregoing busy season went forward, the Bay
newspapers had Jack attending the birthday party, In Mon
terey County, of some one's lapdog — "Fluffy Ruffles V9

Sometimes guiding our friends on the steep trails, or
riding hand in hand to look over progress at the Wolf
House, we talked of the big schooner that some day we
should rig out and start for another round-the-world voy
age. There was never any hint of dullness in the present
nor fear of future boredom.

Four books were issued in 1911 : "When God Laughs, "
"Adventure," "The Cruise of the Snark," and "South Sea
Tales." Of the inscriptions I choose two — this, in the
spring, from "When God Laughs":

"My Own Dear Woman:

"The years come, and the years go, our friends come and go,
some few of them stick — and you and I stick better than any or
all"

From "South Sea Tales," in the fall:

"Dearest Mate- Woman:

"And can we say, after all these years, that we have ever been
happier than we are happy right now!"

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 227

There was much to do — every waking moment. The
thing was, to find time to sleep; yet we regarded that as
rather a leisurely year — perhaps because we did not go
very far from home. My diary records: "Mate works in
the evenings. He is so very busy. It makes my own head
tired when I think of all his head must keep track of."

It was in the late afternoon of October 10, 1911, that
Jack returned on horseback from Glen Ellen, two miles
from the house, and announced with solemnity that he had
just cast his vote for "Woman Suffrage. "Woman Suf
frage," he expounded, "means Prohibition; and that is
why I voted for it. The normal woman," he went on, "has
no liking for alcohol ; through all the ages John Barleycorn
has hurt her heart. All that will be changed when she wins
political power."

This scene stands forever in the Foreword of "John
Barleycorn," the book in which Jack London focused his
sensations and viewpoints in regard to alcohol.

Some time after its publication, he received the letter
below :

" Oakland, California, May 27th, 1916.
"Mr. Jack London,

"Glen Ellen, Calif.
"Dear Friend:

"I take this opportunity in forwarding these few lines remind
ing you of the coincidences which happened in Our Half Day along
the Oakland estuary.

"I understand that my name Spider Healy, along with Soup
Kennedy, Boche Pierrati, Joe Goose and M. J. Hynold has been
heralded all over these United States and the rest of the world and
that you have realized an abundance of wealth both in moving
pictures and a book known as John Barleycorn. If you were to
visit the old haunts of the oyster pirates of the present time you
would find in a very decrepid condition. Financially and otherwise
Soup Kennedy who you described in your book as a worthy op
ponent of Scratch Nelson has been following the sea as a means of
livelyhood. But as time and tide wait for no man he has over-

228 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

looked an opportunity of acquiring a vast wad. Many times we
have sat upon the deck listening to the strains of the chanties, hoping
that a time would arrive when we would again get together either
to talk of the old times or to make arrangements to go salmon fish
ing to Alaska or sealing to the Bonin Islands.

"I was surprised on more than one occasion to have individuals
acost me on the street asking if my name was the Spider Healy of
John Barleycorn fame. On answering in the affirmative I was re
minded that my part of your John Barleycorn was one of most
importance.

' ' There is not a day passes that tourists from the far east and
all parts of the United States do not stand and gaze with astonish
ment at the old relics of the old St. Louis House and the first and
last chance saloon where you have gained renown and fortune.
A few nights ago at the foot of Franklin Street at which place
you weighed anchor many a time I sat and listened to the strains
of some of the Chanties of which you are quite familiar. Again it
brought to mind the old day when you and I heard the same
songs. (Lorenze was no sailor) (Blow the man down) (Whisky for
my Johnies) (we'll pay Pattie Doyle for his boots) and (Bound
for the Bio Grande and sailin Home to merry England town.)

' 'In conclusion the main object of calling your attention to
these facts is to let you know the conditions that now exist with
the pirates whose names have made you fames, in that book &
plan known as John Barleycorn. Johnie Hynold and Joe Yiergue
are the only ones who accumulated a wad and I dare say buried
it like a dog did his bone. To get a quarter from a turnip, is
like extracting the same from these men.

"Johnie Hynold is estimated according to Bradstreet's to be
worth about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars and Joe
Viergue as you know as accumulating his fortune on our hard earned
coin.

' ' I belief that Soup Kennedy has seen his last days as a seaman.
Strength gone, health gone and eyesight failing what was once a
big rough rovish stalwart fellow has dwindled to a mere nothing.

' ' I was talking to him a few days ago and in asking him what
the matter was, he told me that a saw bones told him that his life
was going to nicker out in a short time. He stated that it was not
necessary for the old boy to put him on. On more than one occasion

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 229

I felt my heart slip a cog or two. Now you know Jack when your
heart slips a cog or two there is no possible way to replace it by good
smooth running gear. Soup is very much enthused when I told him
that I was about to ask you for a small bit of assistance. I do not
know what you are estimated to be by Bradstreet or Wall Street
but I certainly would be ever grateful if you generously would be
aroused to such an extent that it would be possible for you to loosen
up and forward at once a check with a substantial amount to pull
Soup and myself out of a hole.

"Now if you want to be a good fellow and have your name
heralded as such along the water front where your childhood days
were spent with the rest of the pirates you will please grant this
request at once.

"Your old pals,

"Soup Kennedy,

"p. S.— We are living at present 416-2nd St. Oakland, Cal., and
will await your earliest convenience, a reply, also that substantial
check, Joe Goose is on his last legs.

" Spider. "

As Jack did not invariably let his left hand know what
his right hand did, I do not know what his reply, if any,
was to the foregoing.

Jack's aversion to spending Christmas in the prescribed
way caused many an outing to begin on the twenty-fourth
of December. And so, that date in 1911 saw Mr. Kisich
opening a bottle of champagne in his " Saddle Rock," to
speed us on the way east. We slept aboard the Western
Pacific Limited that night, headed for New York City. En
route on the Denver and Rio Grande we stopped over at
Salt Lake City to foregather with my friends the Harry
Culmers ; and among other trips, Jack and I went on a little
pilgrimage to Fort Douglas, where in the '60 's my father,
Captain Willard Kittredge, had served under General Con
nor, his duties including those of Provost Marshal of the
beautiful, romantic city.

230 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

The New Year was celebrated in New York. ' ' And this
time," Jack assured me, " we'll go home by way of Cape
Horn."

Almost any passage in our companionship 1 contem
plate with more pleasure than that 1912 winter in
1 Gotham. ' ' The trip had been one of our happiest ; but, once
off the train, and his enthusiasm expressed over the new
Pennsylvania Station, it was the old story. The city reached
into him and plucked to light the least admirable of his
qualities. Out of the wholesome blisses of his western life,
he plunged into a condition that negated his accustomed
personality. Nine-tenths of the two months ' time we made
our headquarters in Morningside Park East, he was not
his usual self. During the other tenth, cropping up in un
expected moments, the manifestation of his dearest self
and his love were never warmer nor more illuminating.

Coincident with our arrival, he warned that he was going
to invite one last, thoroughgoing bout with alcohol, and that
when he should sail on the Cape Horn voyage, it was to be
"Good-by, forever, to John Barleycorn." To me, the
promised end was worth the threatened means; and my
comprehension and acceptance of his intention were ap
preciated. But I could not fail to regret that new friends
should know and base their judgment of Jack London upon
this unfortunate phenomenon of him.

In that Jack London, drunken, was not as other drunken
men, the majority of those who contacted with him during
a period of what he termed his " white logic" deemed they
knew the true, sober Jack London in all his panoply of
normal brilliance. Never, in all my years with him, did I
see him tipsy. An old acquaintance of Jack's, asked con
cerning this phase of the author of "John Barleycorn,"
laughed: "I have known him more or less intimately for
ten years, and I have never seen him intoxicated." And
Jack himself: "I was never interested enough in cocktails

FOUE-HOESE DEIVING-TEIP 231

to know how they were made." Except in rare cases when
a single drink acutely poisoned his stomach, upon him the
effect of alcoholic stimulus was to render preternaturally
active an already superactive mind. Keen, hair-splitting
in controversy, reckless of mind and body, sweeping all
before him, passionately intolerant of man or woman who
challenged his way — all this and more was he in his " white
logic" extreme. This unnatural state, combined with the
depression New York invariably put upon him, was dan
gerous. And there was wanting — and how were others to
know? — the splendid, healthy charm of the big man he was,
the finer potency of his moral integrities, the square truth
of his fundamental faiths and their observance. Much, at
the time, I sensed, watching the calendar day by day as the
day of release from New York approached; more, beyond
guesswork, afterward came to light. But I knew my man,
and, content or not, waited, remembering that I had never
yet waited in vain to welcome back the sane and lovable
boy. More and more deeply am I convinced that it is
not the irks of the wayside that should count in one 's valu
ing of events or individuals. I knew my man. I could only
wish that some others had had such vision for crises like
these in Jack London's contact with his kind.

"New York is one wild maelstrom," he saw it that year.
"Eome in its wildest days could not compare with this
city. Here, making an impression is more important than
making good. ' ' And I take an item from the N. Y. Evening
World, which throws light upon another observation of
Jack's:

"In this great city woman does not care for woman friends.
She will boldly tell you so. She does not trust them. . . . The aver
age so-called wise woman of New York City will not introduce her
attractive men friends to her women friends. ' '

There comes to me, across the years, something for
many years forgotten. He had said to me, very early in
our marriage :

232 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

i ' Don't forget what I have been and been through.
There may, mark, I only say may come times when the
temptation to 'drift'— for an hour, or a day, will stick up
its head; and I may follow. I have drifted all my life —
curiosity, that burning desire to know. Yet, I have knocked

the edge off my curiosity about a lot of things. Still "

in his honesty he anticipated the possibility.

Once, after the baby had 'been lost to him, I asked
innocently, " Where been?" To which, with a teasing look,
he replied, "Oh, pirootmg, my dear — I'll tell you, maybe,
when we're in our seventies!" But long afterward, when
some association of ideas called for it, there would leak
out, among other hinted adventurings, the story of a hard-
fought game of cards in a water-front public house in San
Francisco, or a weird experience of one sort or another with
some nameless waif he had elected to trot around with for
an afternoon or evening.

Eeferring to John Barleycorn and his mental condition
in New York, I once asked him if it would not have been
better for me to withdraw from him at such times — even
to letting him go alone: "No," he reassured. "You did
exactly as you should have done. If you had left me, I
don't know what I should have done."

Another chance affair he divulged when in reminiscent
mood. One afternoon, in the Forum Cigar store in Oak
land, he ran across a man who knew an old Klondike ac
quaintance, whose address he gave. Some mistake was
made, and Jack found himself in a curious little pocket.
A door, answering his ring, let him into a hall at the foot
of a narrow stairway. From the upper end a handsome,
flashy woman called down:

"Hello, you Jack London!"

"How do you know I am Jack London?" he countered
in his surprise at her expectant tone, and mounted several
steps to have a look at her.

The woman peered down at him, then drew back, fear

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 233

and puzzlement in every line and movement. To cut the
tale short, it appeared that the lady had been keeping com
pany for some time with a man who called himself Jack
London, whom she had quite believed was the simon-pure
article enjoying a double life. She assured Jack that he
bore a strong resemblance to her friend.

Once, that winter of 1912 in New York, he had said with
smoldering eyes: "If you've got the nerve, I'll take you
drifting! It would be great fun. One lark would be to
board a subway, any subway, and run to the very end of
the line ; get off, start in any direction, and ring the bell of
the first house that took our fancy. Say 'Good evening,7
cordially, to whoever came to the door, and get inside, talk
ing a blue streak, acting as if we were old friends. Of
course, they'd think we were crazy, and the more familiar
we got, the more excited they. The police would be sum
moned " he broke off in a giggle that was the only fa
miliar thing in his manner, " — but what's the use?" he
finished gloomily. "You wouldn't be game for a mess like
that! but think of the fun!" and he regarded me quizzi
cally, as if calculating the experiment he was making upon
the stuff of my character. I flatly declined to be lured by
this or kindred prospects. He knew I would go with him
anywhere and back again, but not when he was in this ex
treme, unnormal state. So ho resumed his "pirooting" —
I really do not know how to spell the word, and the diction
ary is no help.

A wonder it is that nothing happened to him. Settling
in a barber's chair one day, he noticed the man was shak
ing as with violent ague :

' ' What 's the idea 1 " he inquired kindly. ' ' Made a night
of it?"

"Several," the barber chattered under his breath, glanc
ing warily around. "Don't know how I'm g-g-going to
shave you or anybody."

234 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

And Jack, with the razor making oblique stabs against
his windpipe, sensing the wielder was in danger of losing
his job, told him to "go through the motions, anyway,"
and he would make no fuss.

"But, man," I expostulated, "you might have had your
throat cut!"

"Oh, well," he said, "he was in an awful state, and I
couldn't get up and go out and give him away to the whole
shop. I didn't enjoy it a bit, I assure you!"

I have speculated if he ever thought to liken his act to
that of Eobert Louis Stevenson, who is reputed to have ac
cepted and smoked a half-consumed cigarette from a leper,
rather than cause affront. Jack had often brought up
that story to illustrate his conception of gameness.

He would not take care of himself. Coughing badly,
week in and week out, he declined to wear other than thin
"low-cuts" with sheerest of silk socks. "Don't bother —
I'll be all right," was all that I, or the small fatherly
Nakata, could elicit.

The New York World, during the Equitable Life fire,
sent him a badge that gave him the freedom of that pre
cinct of ice and flame; but I, who should have liked to
share this real adventure, was barred by my sex.

Dozens of plays we attended together; a dozen or so
books Jack read aloud to me; and there was a trip to
Schenectady, where Frank Hancock, whom we had met in
New Orleans, introduced us to Professor Charles P. Stein-
metz, genius of the General Electric, and took us through
the leviathan plant ; for Jack was always sharp-set to study
the enormous achievements of the human in harnessing
force. At Schenectady we were guests of Dr. and Mrs.
Cyrus E. Baker. In their home Jack treated his soul to
an orgy of music, for Mrs. Baker had been on the grand
opera stage, and her husband was a masterly accompanist.
Another out-of-town week-end was spent at Short Beach,

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 235

Connecticut, with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Wilcox — Ella
Wheeler — of our Jamaica memories.

Attending a tea at the Liberal Club on January 27, 1912,
given in his honor, Jack was asked by a socialist if he was
a "Direct Actionist." Jack regarded his questioner cau
tiously for a moment, then asked him to define what he
meant by the term. ' ' One who favors strikes and the like, ' '
was the definition:

"Yes, I am a direct actionist, as you call it. Direct
Action, as I understand it, is teaching us the true fighting
spirit, which is going to be the greatest asset the people of
the masses possess when the great struggle finally comes
between them and their present masters. There is a hard
time coming. We shall have a big fight, but the masses will
conquer in the end, because they form the stronger and
more stable body. The story of the struggle will be written
in blood. The ruling classes will not let go until it is."

Some one asked him to give his ideas on the subject of
universal peace. He replied that there would come a time
when all human contention would be settled amicably with
the aid of referees, but that we must use our fighting spirit
to bring about this condition. We must fight to stop war.

"What will you do with the fighting spirit when this
ideal state comes to pass?" some one asked.

"Dig potatoes with it!" Jack shouted vehemently.
"Write books with it, govern with it. By turning this en
ergy, now wasted in building up great armaments with
which to kill, into civilized channels, civilization would
mean twice what it does now."

Of writing on his novel, "The Valley of the Moon,"
he did almost none; but he transacted considerable busi
ness with publishers. He had left the Macmillans, and con
tracted with Doubleday, Page & Company for "A Son of
the Sun." The Century Company brought out the next
four volumes— "Smoke Bellew Tales," "The Night Born,"
"The Abysmal Brute," and "John Barleycorn." In the

236 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

fall of 1913, with "The Valley of the Moon," Jack resumed
relations with the Macmillans, and continued thenceforth
with that house.

One writer whose company greatly illumined our so
journ in New York was Michael Monahan; and Jack and
Richard Le Gallienne got together most pleasantly. Sev
eral afternoons were set aside for receiving callers. Alex
ander Berkman came to see Jack, for the purpose of en
listing his aid in the matter of a Preface to his "Prison
Memoirs of an Anarchist." The two " scrapped" amiably,
and Jack wrote the Preface, but, in the nature of their radi
cal differences, it was repudiated by Berkman and his as
sociate anarchists. I shall include the Preface in some
future collection, together with Jack's comments upon
Berkman 's refusal, written several years thereafter.
"Alexander Berkman," I quote from the latter document,
"could not see his way to using my introduction, and got
some one else to write a more sympathetic one for him.
Also, socially, comradely, he has forgotten my existence
ever since."

Late that year, asked by an Oakland Tribime man if,
with his interest in the economic aspect of the world, he
did not find New York the best place for his observations,
Jack cried:

"Great Scott, no, no! I must have the open, the big
open. No big city for me, and above all not New York. I
think it is the cocksure feeling of superiority which the peo
ple of the metropolis feel over the rest of the country that
makes me rage — when it does not remind me of something
near home. Next to my Eanch is an institution for the
feebleminded. When some of the inmates who are not as
feeble minded as the rest, are through with their chores,
one or another of them will shake his or her head and say
with great thankfulness: "Well, heaven he praised, I'm
not feebleminded."

"And yet," he concluded benevolently, "I feel that

FOUR-HORSE DRIVING-TRIP 237

way about New Yorkers only when I see or think of them
collectively. When I meet them one by one it is another
story. ' '

This reminds one of what R. L. S. said, as remembered
by Robert S. Lysaght, to a similar question ;

"It is all the better for a man's work, if he wants it
to be good and not merely popular. Human nature is al
ways the same, and you see and understand it better when
you are standing outside the crowd/'

CHAPTER XXXV

CAPE HOBN VOYAGE
1912

FOUR of us sailed around Cape Horn, from Baltimore
to Seattle — Jack London, wife, Nakata, and an engag
ing fox terrier puppy, three months foolish, who was des
tined to play an important part in Jack's household till
the end of life. " Possum " we named him, in memory of
a rough-coated little Irish gentleman we had known in the
South Seas — brother to dear Peggy of the Snar~k, immortal
in our hearts. The fox Possum figures in ' l The Valley of the
Moon," which was resumed and completed on the Cape
Horn voyage, and also in "The Mutiny of the Elsinore,"
this book being an out-growth of that experience on a wind
jammer. Besides "The Valley of the Moon," Jack made
copious notes for "John Barleycorn," and wrote a short
sea story, "The Tar Pot," published serially as "The Cap
tain of the Susan Drew," and not yet collected in book
form.

It was a very subdued, much-himself Jack London who
stopped over with me in Philadelphia en route to Baltimore
to take ship. And Philadelphia unconsciously perpetrated
a classic joke on itself: without knowing, it entertained for
three days at the leading hotel "America's most advertised
writer." It seemed so strange that I had no accustomed
duties to perform in the way of answering telephone calls
from reporters in the lobby! For not one ever discovered
the sprawling signature in the hotel register. The silence
of the brotherhood of scribes was certainly not due to any

238

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 239

boycott on Jack London, for they had hitherto appeared
unanimously kind to his work.

The morning of our sailing from Baltimore, on March 2,
1912, as I sat alone writing my farewell letters home, the
door opened and I heard Jack in colloquy with Nakata. I
caught the words, in a giggly whisper, "Wait till Mrs.
London sees me!" Something told me what I should be
hold, and I refrained from raising my eyes until obliged
to do so. He had long threatened to do it, but until then
had withheld the act because of my pleading. His head was
as naked as a billiard ball. I looked him over with assumed
poise, and resumed my writing. Jack tittered. I said
* * Yes, I see ; but it isn ' t funny. ' ' Jack tittered again. < ' But
it isn't funny," I repeated, beginning to lose hold of my
self. "Oh, now, don't feel badly, Mate Woman," he began,
for my voice was becoming unsteady, I know. "It is such
a good rest for my head — I often did it in the old days, at
sea and around."

It was the last straw in a hard winter, to mix a meta
phor. I wept uncontrolledly for nearly three hours. There
is a photograph of the pair of us, taken that day be
side Edgar Allen Poe 's monument, in which a very heavily
coated Jack London, hat pulled down most unbecomingly
over a chill scalp, stands with a woman who tries to hide
swollen eyes and forlorn mouth in a new set of very
handsome red fox. Jack looked apprehensive when I re
marked that my own head needed a rest, and started for
the scissors. But I only sheared off eight inches. I did'
not again look directly at Jack until there was at least
half an inch of hair on his head.

The Dingo, 3000 tons net registered, seventeen years
old, had been the first steel ship launched by the famous
Sewalls of Bath, Maine. She was technically a four-masted
barque. Jack chose the Dingo over a much newer clipper for
the reason that she carried skysails — fast becoming obso-

240 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

lete. "And how I'd like to take you around the Horn on a
ship with moonsails!" he lamented the impossibility.

Captain Omar Chapman, of Newcastle, Maine, was one
of the fast disappearing type of lean New England aristo
crat, who always presented himself on deck immaculately
attired, his especial hobbies fine hats and cravats. His
quiet Yankee humor extended to these little foibles and a
frank contempt for the common clay of modern deep-water
sailors. The calm kingliness of his character was in cod
contrast to that of the Mate, Fred Mortimer, hot-hearted,
determined, all-around efficient driver of a crew that was
composed, with a few exceptions well along in years, of
landlubbers and weaklings.

Imagine our surprise to learn that Captain Warren, of
the Snark, had applied for the berth of second officer, al
though in ignorance of our presence in the ship. As sur
prising was the fact that the man who was accepted bore
the same name!

We paid $1000.00 for our passage, and, since such ves
sels carry no passenger license, had to sign on the articles,
Jack as third mate, myself as stewardess, and Nakata as
cabin-boy. It must have been attributable to Yankee thrift
that, when it became known we traveled with a man, no
cabin boy was taken along. Therefore many duties aft fell
to our private servant, over and above his service to Jack
and me, and Nakata put up with the gratuitous injustice
with good grace rather than create unpleasantness.

The Dirigo stood out to sea in an abating icy gale that
had held her bound for exasperating weeks. Eough and
bitter cold it was, but nothing mattered to me except the
fact that land was left behind, in prospect long months of
blissful sea life with its cleansing simplicities.

In all the one hundred and forty-eight days, our eyes
rested on land but once — or in one brief period of two or
three days — literally land's-end, the end of the earth, the
island of Cape Horn itself, with the continuous mainland

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 241

and islands. Even Diego Ramirez, sinister finger of stone
to the south of the Continent, became visible in the war of
water and cloud.

"Cape Horn on the starboard bow!" on May 10, was
the most exciting tocsin, next to a savage war conch, I had
ever awakened to.

"Gee — you folks are lucky !" Mr. Mortimer exclaimed,
as, wrapped in heavy coats, we clung to the poop-rail and
actually gazed upon the Cape. "I tell you, I've made this
passage more times than I can remember, and I haven't
laid eyes on that there island since 1882! The fog has
never raised. " And the day before, conditions being favor
able for the risky feat, the Captain had been able to reduce
time by passing through the Straits of Lemaire, instead of
going around Staten Island. It was exciting business,
made more breathless by sight of a great wreck, standing
stark upright in her doom of shallow water off the main
land.

Our farthest south was Lat. 57° 32', Lon. 67° 28'. And
though we had some little difficulty "making westing" and
were driven back time and again, our traverse "from 50
to 50" was but fifteen days, which is almost better than a
master mariner dare hope.

"How could you endure such a life!" women a-many
have said to me. There was no single moment of weari-
someness to either Jack or me. Think of the industrious
working hours — even I, suddenly inspired by one of the
anecdotes from Captain or officers, wrote a sea yarn, i i The
Wheel," afterwards published at a round price by a news
paper syndicate. He had been much surprised and de
lighted when, without warning or comment, I laid my
manuscript with his night-reading. And after I had bene
fited by suggestions from him: "It's quite good enough
for you to go ahead and market ! " he advised to my aston
ishment.

For at least three hours daily, on deck in fine weather,

242 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

otherwise sitting below on his high bunk with a bright
"angle-lamp" at either end, Jack read aloud while I em
broidered a new supply of fine lingerie. We read every
thing from Chinese lore to Eobert W. Chambers. "And
for once, ' ' my companion grinned, ' i I Ve time to read Sue 's
' Wandering Jew.7 I never could 'see' the time for it
before."

Oh, the vivifying salt air, and the sea-food — good old
"salt horse" and beef tongue, and the cook's inspired
concoctions of tinned dainties! Captain Chapman had
brought along a well-stocked hencoop solely because there
was to be a woman aboard; but after he had been taken
mysteriously ill the day before sighting the Horn, the
fresh eggs had been a boon. Indeed, he lived many weeks
because of the whites of eggs I was able to serve him ; but
he died two days after arriving at Seattle — and alas, be
fore his wife could come to him from Maine. Cancer of
the stomach, the doctors diagnosed. I spent a whole night,
in the hotel, sadly enough, but glad of my detailed notes,
writing Mrs. Chapman a log of the voyage from the day
her husband was stricken.

So placidly and promptly his old self was Jack at sea,
that I, slowly recuperating from acute nerve-strain, con
templated him with the amazement women must ever feel
toward certain phases of their menfolk. My diary ex
claims in wonder: "I do believe the man has utterly for
gotten New York and its abominations!" But later, when
I had hurt a finger, and developed a "run-around" that held
me sleepless through nights of pain, his devotion seemed
to carry a new note, and there were moments when I saw
float up through the deeps of his eyes a knowledge of all
that those weary eight weeks had meant to me.

The Master and Jack gathered fuel for everlasting fun
at my expense. Two long connecting staterooms had been
fitted up for us, that we might have separate bunks. It
was to general systemic upset that I attributed an annoy-

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 243

ing attack of hives that followed sailing. With tin upon
tin of cream of tartar from the ship's galley my offended
stomach was dosed; I tried sleeping all over the vessel aft —
in the main cabin, and even in the chart-room, where [
seemed to rest the best. And the consumption of cream
of tartar and sympathy in the cabin went on apace. Then
a suspicion began to dawn in the Captain, which precipitated
an investigation of my freshly painted wooden bunk. The
secret was out. All the scrubbing and painting and fumiga
tion had failed to dislodge the last of a nest of the ubiquitous
bed-bug that a ship is never able quite to eradicate. A
broad grin was evident from stem to stern of the Dirigo
the day a young sailor had finally eradicated the pest, and
I never heard the last of my "hives."

Would you pursue beauty indescribable, go to sea on a
wind-jammer. I know no more exalted moments than
when, a hundred miles off the coast of Brazil I have set my
face to the four quarters of the heavens, upon which were
painted as many astounding sunsets, with a heavy moon
lifting to spill thick silver in a fading copper sea; or have
clung in the eyes of her, the great steel body of the ship
plunging enormously onward among the night-green rollers
of her moonlit highway, her orderly forest of masts sway
ing, swerving, to the weight of full sails — gargantuan pearls,
hard and bright, strung to the loftiest spars of the golden
masts, white-gleaming in the very witchery of moonlight
that transfigures all their majesty into the immateriality
of a vision. Masefield knows it all :

' ' I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the

sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched white sails of

ships."

How could I live such a life ? Woe is me — how can I live
without it !

Night after night, fair weather or foul — and it was all

244 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

of a magnificence, dead calm or great guns blowing — I took
a note-book and pencil to the poop hatch, and painted, as
well as I could in words, the sunsets and their mirrored
reflections on the vast dome. Bits of these " sketches "
are in "The Mutiny of the Elsinore." On a day I may
come upon the rest among Jack's own notes, and drop an
hour from a busy dozen to find my feet again treading the
deck or the fore-and-aft bridge of the Dirigo, stately and
beautiful moving house of ocean, now, along with our old
friend the Tymeric, at one with the slime. For the Huns
got them both. I would that mermen and mermaids could
people them for ay !

For exercise we boxed lustily, trained and played with
the puppy, and climbed into the "top" of the mainmast—
the first foot-hold of the same above deck, reached by preca
rious, lurching way of the shrouds from the rail. In Jack's
pocket was a book, in mine my embroidery. Here, remote,
ecstatic, above the "wrinkled sea" and the slender fabric
of steel, we lived some of our finest hours, enthralled by
the recurrent miracle of unbored days, love ever regenerate,
and contemplation of our unwasted years.

Once around the Horn, Jack took to hooking albatross,
catching quite a number. Some were liberated, but several
he kept. I still have the skins— twelve feet from tip to tip,
if I remember aright.

One of his activities was pulling teeth for the crew —
to say nothing of assisting Possum to shed her puppy-
molars which, in lack of normal food and bones, were
troublesome in letting go. For Jack had not forgotten to
bring along his Snark dentistry case.

The first news of an almost forgotten world in five
months was of the Titanic disaster, and, next, that our old
acquaintance, President Alfaro of Ecuador, and his son (a
West Point man) had been murdered in Quito and their
headless bodies dragged through the streets.

And would any one know what Jack London thought

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 245

of t ' enduring such a life, ' ' half a year away from the land
spaces of the world :

"Mate," he said in all earnestness, as the dear, gray,
battered hull towed up Puget Sound, looking pensively at
the sailors aloft making all snug, ' ' I wish it had been a year,
or years! — You remember, don't you? how happy I was
stocking up inexhaustible reading matter, in case we got
driven back from the Horn and had to double the Cape of
Good Hope, and on around the world that way!"

There had been one shadow upon me. One evening
about three months out, at table, the Mate, Fred Mortimer,
remarked :

"I never drink on duty. I drink very little anyway;
just a glass now and again on shore with the fellows."
Jack replied, to my dismay :

"That is what I am now working toward. I have, by
putting myself, for the first time in my life, where I am
absolutely free for months of alcohol, with alcohol en
tirely purged from my system — in a position, also for the
first time in my life, to review the whole question of alcohol
with reference to myself and that system, and my brain.
I have learned, to my absolute satisfaction, that / am not
an alcoholic in any sense of the word. Therefore, when
I am on land again, I shall drink, as you drink, occa
sionally, deliberately, not because I have to have alcohol
in the economy of my physical system, but because / want
to, we'll say for social purposes. I never have been so
happy in my life concerning alcohol with reference to my
self, as I am right now this minute. It has never mastered
me, I now know; it never shall. There is no danger of it
mastering me."

Although I knew he was giving us the honest content
of his best conclusions in the matter, I also felt that I
knew he would fail of the perfection of such a plan. He
did. But what counts in the end — is the end, and near that
end he drank but little.

246 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Four days in Seattle were spent, if the newspapers
were to be trusted, in a lavender satin-lined suite, Jack at
tired exquisitely in pink silk pajamas and reveling in per
fumed ablutions.

It was the old Puebla that carried us down the coast.
There were two reasons for this voyage : one, we were not
wearied of the sea; the other, it was feasible for us to have
Possum with us more than would have been allowed by rail.
The evening of August second we sat in the front row at
the Oakland Orpheum, our seats ordered by wireless from
' ' outside ' ' the previous day. And it was one of our happiest
homecomings, as will be seen.

For, the long voyage ended, we looked for another child
in March — a child love-beckoned, to fill a heart's desire
once bereft. But owing solely to the ignorance in which we
had been left of certain conditions that should have been
corrected before another birth was to be thought of, a
second blighting disappointment was suffered within a
month of our return.

Jack was sadly cast down, though he said little. But
his somber state cropped out indirectly in a letter to me.
He was entertaining a houseful of guests who had been with
us when I was obliged to go into hospital for a few days.
Some criticisms had been made of his supporting a trio or
more of his pet hobo philosophers — so picturesquely and
sympathetically delineated in "The Little Lady of the Big
House" as "the seven sages of the Madrono Grove. " The
title was a reminiscence of his delving into Chinese Legend
on the Dirigo. He wrote me in a strain that showed a cumu
lative discouragement with human things that had led him
to take agriculture so seriously:

1 ' As for , I get more sheer pleasure out of an hour 's talk

with him than all my inefficient Italian laborers have ever given
me. He pays his way. My God, the laborers never have paid theirs.

The Ranch has never lost much money on X , and Y , and

g 1 and R , and T , and all the rest of the fellows who've

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 247

had a few meals and beds out of me. The Ranch has lost a hell
of a lot on the weak sticks of cash-per-day laborers who 've battened
off of me and on me. Don't forget that the Ranch is my problem.
This one and that one never helped me. It was I, when I was ripe,
and when I saw a flicker of intelligence in this one and that one,
who proceeded to shake things down. What all these various ones
have lost for me in cash is a thousand times more than the price of
the few meals and beds I've given to my bums. And I give these
paltry things of paltry value out of my heart. I 've not much heart
throb left for my fellow beings. Shall I cut this wee bit thing out
too?"

Yet right near this time, returning from a week's ab
sence, he brought home with him a false friend of his early
writing days, an old beneficiary who, for some fancied slight,
had kept away from Jack for years and talked bitterly
against him. I, at sight of Jack with this man in tow, was
inwardly as mad as a much dampened mother-hen, although
it was incumbent upon me to be courteous in my own house.
Jack had taken me aside at first opportunity:

"The poor devil/' he said, "—Mate Woman, be good
to him ; I know you will. It gave me pleasure to bring him.
After all, he's only hypersensitive — I don't know what
about, in my case ; but at any rate, I decided to forget his
silly treatment of me — it was only silly, after all. ' '

Home from the Bohemian Club's High Jinks, Jack set
tled into his stride on the new book, "John Barleycorn,"
by some reviewers jocosely dubbed his "alcoholic memoirs"
and "a bibulous epic." But the work, containing so much
autobiographical material of serious portent, was far from
humorous. Despite the author's sense of artistry that made
it read like fiction and placed certain exaggerations to best
advantage, during my typing, as it unfolded day by day,
I was conscious of shock upon shock at the content of Jack's
mind. Not only with regard to his past, far and near, was
I impressed ; but also by a realization of the restlessness and
deep-reaching melancholy he suffered from the frustration

248 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

of his dearest ambition — victorious fatherhood of my chil
dren. But our days together were happy, and here is what
he wrote in my copy of " Smoke Bellew":

"I am still filled with the joy of your voice that was mine
last night when you sang. Sometimes, more than any clearly
wrought concept of you, there are fiber-sounds in your throat that
tell me all the lovableness of you, and that I love as madly as I
have always loved all the rest of you."
"Oct. 2, 1912. "

Four hundred acres known as the Freund Ranch, had
been annexed to the upper reaches of the Kohler, though
Jack had to mortgage. The "Wolf House " was slowly
mounting, story by story, Jack's big draft horses laboring
four and four, from a quarry three miles across the valley
and up our mountain, with the great volcanic boulders that
were the same red-amethystine hue of the redwood logs
also to be used in construction. "We gloat over the grow
ing red arches, " my diary reads; and to me, in Oakland,
Jack wrote :

' ' The stone house grows. Two four-horse wagons hauling lumber
to-day — 20 loads of it. Bar accidents, we'll be in our own home
next fall."

And he goes on in the same letter:

"Miss you? I've got to have you away from me for a couple
of days truly to appreciate you. To myself, all the time, these days,
I keep swearing : * She 's a wonder ! She 's a wonder ! '

"For you are. You're the best thing that ever happened to
me.

"When are you coming home? I miss you so dreadfully."

In early November, I went again into hospital for an
overhauling that included a minor operation. We made it
up that Jack should hold my hand during the taking of the
ether, so that we might "keep up the lines " to the end of

CAPE HOEN VOYAGE 249

consciousness. I seemed to come to the Edge of Things,
when another moment would yield me the Riddle of the
Universe. Poised on the brink, I hung in an agony of de
sire to fix firmly what I should grasp, in order to pass the
priceless gift to Jack — possessed by an overwhelming
knowledge of what it would mean to his brain. Then some
thing snapped, and I knew nothing until I heard :

" She's gone, Mr. London," and I felt him relax his
clasp.

"Oh, no, Fm not, Mate!" protested I. But that was the
last thought until I came out.

Jack's daily calls, with their tea-parties for two, were a
source of joy to me; and one day, blowing into my room
full of news of the day, laden with magazines and books, he
burst forth :

"I simply cannot tell you what these afternoons mean to
me — how I look forward to them from day to day ! ' '

Then he went on to tell how he had signed a five-year
serial contract with The Cosmopolitan, for all his fiction.
This, so long as he delivered the pledged amount of fiction,
was not to interfere with any non-fiction he might write and
sell to other periodicals. Hence, when the semi-autobio
graphical "John Barleycorn" appeared serially, it was in
the Saturday Evemng Post. This work, while it created
a sensation, had no phenomenal book-sale. Jack laid the
fact to the Post's enormous circulation, and vowed that
the next time he sold anything to that weekly it must pay
him a larger rate to offset the diminished book-royalties.
As to the Post itself, he said :

"I hate the sight of it — because, forsooth, when I open
a number I can't lay it down, and it takes too much time
from my other reading ! ' '

Once, at a dance in a Honolulu hotel, Cyrus Curtis, stand
ing alone, was pointed out to Jack. "I'm going to have
some fun — watch me ! " he whispered. Stepping over to the
great publisher, he said:

250 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"Mr. Curtis, I believe? — IVe done some work for you
now and again. * '

The older man, little dreaming that this was the author
of two of his most successful serials, "The Call of the
Wild" and "John Barleycorn, " looked politely inquiring,
probably thinking the modest-voiced, soft-collared man
might be a typesetter.

"Jack London is my name."

1 ' Jack London ! — Man, do get me out of this ! ' ' And the
two, arms linked, disappeared into a veranda and were seen
no more until time to go home.

Recalling those afternoon teas in my hospital room, a
very sweet thing happened one day. Somewhere I have
referred to Jack's regret that he had never learned the soft,
pretty ways of social intercourse. "I never bought flowers
for a woman in my life," I had heard him say. One after
noon, lying and gazing into the sunny tree-tops, I caught
myself wondering how Jack would look entering with a big
bunch of double-violets. I turned to see whom the door
was admitting, and there was he, red and flustering with an
armful of flowers, and my double-violets — a bunch as large
as his head! "There are yours, Mate Woman — and these
others are for Joan. ' ' His elder girl was ill at her mother 's
home. Jack proceeded :

"Curious coincidence — IVe just got your doctor-bill and
Joan's nurse-bill. And they're identical — $125 each!"

"I'll tell you something queerer than that," I answered,
handing him a New York check for the same amount.
1 1 This is in payment for my one and only story, l The Wheel, '
— and I mean for you to put it into the family pot to pay
Joan's nurse!"

"I'll do it, I'll do it!" Jack looked at me steadily
a moment, an odd expression in the eyes that were as blue
at the moment as my violets. N

But what could be sweeter than the tale of an incident

CAPE HORN VOYAGE 251

that came from his lips one day when he had slipped into
the bedside chair and taken my hand — looking with affec
tion upon where it lay, idle for once, in his palm:

"I'm a silly fool, I suppose — I don't know what ever
made me do it; but down in the Forum Cigar Store this
noon, matching for cigarettes, the men got to talking about
adventure, and women, and what not. I don't know how it
came about; but I found myself telling those fellows — I
can't even remember their names — how I had once nearly
signed on to go to the Marquesas ; how I longed to see those
and all the isles of the South Seas, with, in my eyes, more
especially the romance of conquest among the brown
maidens sung by poet and sailor. . . . All very well, my
dear ; but I didn 't stop with that ; I went on, the proudest,
happiest man you ever saw, and bragged, positively bragged
to those city men that when I had at last gone into those
same South Seas, with the memory of an old longing, it was
with my small white woman by my side. And that, co-ad
venturers, we lived our own faithful romance of the South
Seas."

When I was able to leave hospital and sail on the
Roamver, he brought her from Vallejo to Oakland, ac
companied by a house-guest, Laurence Godfrey Smith, a
concert pianist whom he had known in Australia, To him
Jack declared :

"We chose a boat as small as this so that we could flee
from even our best friends once in a while ; but we're going
to make an exception of you, Laurie. Though, I 'm afraid, ' '
dubiously, "that we'll have to put you to bed on the floor
beside the centerboard, with the aid of a shoe-horn!" And
when, months afterward, we saw "Laurie" off to Australia,
Jack, contemplating the silent grand piano, said : "It seems
as if some one had died!"

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE BAD YEAR; AGRICULTURE

1913

1913, though it yielded a measure of good fortune, Jack
was wont to name his "bad year." It did seem as if
almost everything that could hurt befell him. First, there
was the death of a woman friend, an invalid, whom for years
he had seen seldom. Never had I observed him so stirred
by the passing of any adult person. That this one, so
bright, so brave, should have ceased, for once made his
philosophy waver.

"I did something last night I never did before," he
confessed. "I concentrated every thought and actually
tried to call that girl back. If any one could, I think it
would be myself. ... Of course," he smiled half -foolishly,
"there was no answer."

His sister's boy, Irving Shepard, was nearly electro
cuted while playing in a tree during school recess, and lay
precariously ill for months in our house.

Jack himself had to undergo a sudden operation for
appendicitis.

One of the most valuable draft brood-mares, in foal, was
found dead in pasture, from a bullet.

An old man ran amuck one night and "shot up the
ranch." Jack landing upon the scene, in the space of three
seconds had disarmed the lunatic, who, in retaliation, haled
him into court for ' ' choking an old man into insensibility. ' '
"Me, choking an old man into insensibility!" Jack fumed.
"Can't you see me?"

252

THE BAD YEAR 253

Then, there was serious want of early rains, and a
1 ' false spring " brought out blossom and young fruit untime
ly, only to be frosted after belated showers. On top of that,
the valleys of California were visited by a plague of grass
hoppers. They fastened even upon Jack's baby eucalyptus
trees, which were supposedly immune from pest and blight.
Nature's beneficence, in his view, was more than counter
balanced by nature's cruelty. * ' Certainly, ' ' he would groan
in unison with his harassed sister, "God doesn't love the
farmer! Look at that beautiful half -grown cornfield
scorched and withered by sun and north wind!"

One of the bitterest mischances was an attack upon him,
in court, by a moving-picture promoter whose name enemies
metamorphosed into * * Porchclimber. " The suit was brought
to establish whether or not Jack London owned any copy
right in his work. A noted eastern attorney was retained,
one whom we heard had had a hand in the drafting of copy
right law, to take charge of the infamous prosecution. The
whole affair was so baldly pernicious that the Los Angeles
judge threw it out of court.

Jack had gone into the fight with every atom of his
energy, and, since his downfall would mean that of all
American authors, he was backed, should he lose, by the
Authors' League of America, in the determination to carry
the fight into the highest courts of the Union. Very quietly
the noted lawyer returned whence he came, and it has never
come to my ears that he boasted of the part for which he
had been cast.

Later on, as an outcome of the controversy, two film-
versions of "The Sea Wolf" were being shown on opposite
sides of the same street in Los Angeles. Of Hobart Bos-
worth's depiction of the hero Jack said:

"When I wrote 'The Sea Wolf,' the physical image
of Larsen that took shape in my mind was more or less
vague in outline and detail. Nevertheless, it was there, in
my mind, and I carried it with me for years, until it was

254 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

almost real to me. But it fled, like a ghost at daybreak, when
I saw on the screen Mr. Hobart Bosworth, the real, three
dimension, flesh-and-blood Sea Wolf. Until I die the image
of the Sea Wolf will be Mr. Bosworth as I saw him on the
screen. "

There were moments, during the preparation for the
copyright fight, when Jack became sc enraged that I was
alarmed about him. But one morning, after an untoward
outbreak of "catastrophic red wrath'7 the preceding night,
he came to me with a face of humility :

" I 'm all right now, Mate. You needn't be afraid for me
any more. I'll be good from now on. — Only, you know, it's
awfully hard to sit by quietly and let these sons of toads
try to take the earnings of your whole life's work away
from you ! ' '

"If they get me," he said one gloomy day when I had
cheered him with the reminder that I shared his trouble
equally, and that we must endure everything shoulder to
shoulder, "If they get me, you might as well know that
we'll lose everything we have — the Ranch, even; every
thing. But I've still my earning capacity, and we'll buy a
big ship outright, one of those we were looking at last
winter in the Alameda Basin. And we '11 put in a fireplace,
like Lord and Lady Brassey's on the Sunbeam, and take
your grand piano, and be quit forever of a country where a
man's life-work can be cheated out of him by a lot of thea
trical sharks and their crooked copyright lawyers — and
we'll tell them all to go to hell !" he wound up out of breath.
And later, "Why, we could even pick up odd freights here
and there over the world," he became interested in spite
of his righteous wrath, ' ' and make the old tub pay for her
self ! What do you say I ' '

Eanch guests can attest the incredulous delight my at
titude afforded him in this dark period. "Would you be
lieve it ! " he was never tired of acclaiming, ' i I actually think
she wanted me to ride to my fall ! I rather thought the idea

THE BAD YEAR 255

did not shock her much. By next morning she had got well
under way with cabin-plans — and as the days went by and
my troubles and my moods smoothed out, she seemed dis
appointed that I was not to be driven to embarking upon
the endless voyage.''

Perhaps I was disappointed — why not? Had he not al
ways proved a calmer, happier soul in a sea-existence away
from the warring frictions of the land ?

It may be that hardest of misfortunes was the losing of
Jack 's ' ' dream house ' ' by fire. Everything else paled, how
ever, when one day, overheated on a long walk while suffer
ing from a bad attack of poison-oak, I fell ill. For some
time Jack had been absorbed in work, ranch, and other
problems; but now, faced with a human, vital considera
tion, all beside could go by the board. As he said :

"Mate Woman, I always suspected I had a heart, but
now I know. I am the proudest man in the world — I have
a heart. And when I was face to face with the possibility of
losing you, that heart seemed to come right into my throat —
I ate it, I tell you, and I forced it down. Truly, truly, I
was near dying ! ' '

It was about this time that he said to a man friend,
who told me long afterward, "If anything should happen
to Charmian, I'd kill myself. I wouldn't try to live without
her."

There were strains and wounds unhealable dealt Jack
in that unlucky twelve-month, trials of spirit that caused
him to say in retrospect:

"My face changed forever in that year of 1913. It has
.never been the same since."

Still, midmost of all this, he protested having been
called a pessimist by a Jewish cub reporter:

"I am not a pessimist at all. Why, I exploited to you
that love is the biggest thing in the world, and held out my
arms to you and to all the world in love while I was
talking to you. No man who is a lover can be a pessimist.

256 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

When you have grown a few years older, you will realize
that a man who disagrees with your political, economic and
sociological beliefs, does not necessarily have to be a pessi
mist — especially if he be a self -proclaimed lover. "

I was not surprised when Jack announced that he had
made a gamble. Two brothers-in-law of a famous writer,
with alluring credentials, had approached him with a propo
sition to exchange his signature for certain Mexican land
stocks. Jack looked very carefully into the business, and
assured me he was safe in case the project fell through.
* ' I invest nothing, you see. They want my name in it, that
is all; and I stand to win." But they got him in the end.

Then there was a so-called "fidelity" loan outfit that
"trimmed" him for a similar amount. This matter was
taken into court, and while the company was patently
fraudulent, it won upon a technicality. Jack had chosen a
youthful lawyer who had his career to make:

"Might as well give an unknown a chance! And he'll
probably represent me as well as another." He was fond
of saying: "A 'practitioner' is one who practices upon his
victims, anyway!"

These two ventures left Jack out of pocket about ten
thousand dollars. Once I made reference to them, and he
said:

"Please — I don't want to talk albout them at all."
Which was unlike his usual eagerness to elucidate his af
fairs. It must be recorded that when he went into specula
tions, he labeled them frankly:

"Eemember what I tell you, in case these go wrong —
that they are deliberate gambles. I think they are good
gambles ; but sheer gambles they are. There 7s nothing like
playing a flyer on a long chance. Pure lottery. Sometimes
a chance proves a big winner. I've never won anything yet.
Maybe now's my chance!"

All I had to say was that a man who "made good" as
he did, in all his obligations, had a right to "take a flyer"

THE BAD YEAR 257

upon occasion. Jack smiled with pleasure; and his face
bore the same expression when he told some one how, one
day aboard the Roamer, lying off an inland city, I had
said:

1 1 Don't let yourself get stale aboard, if you feel like hav
ing a little recreation. Why don't you go ashore and look
up a good card game of some sort. It will do you good."

He took the suggestion, but returned shortly.

''Oh, I pirooted around a while, and watched some play
ing; but I didn't see anything that looked half so good
to me as this cabin and the little wife-woman who wanted
me to do as I pleased! . . . Where's that pinochle deck!
I can beat you a rubber of three out of five games before
Sano has that fish-chowder ready. ' '

January aboard the Roamer saw Jack drafting his first
chapter of "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" — a whacking
good sea-story, true, modern; beneath the romance and
action a heartfelt protest against the decayed condition
of the American merchant marine. It was finished in
August, and serial publication, under title of "The Gang
sters," begun in Hearst Magazine for November. For
once, he was touched with his creation. This from my
diary : ' ' Mate has a great moment in creating the character
of Captain West. Stopped me as I went by, to read me
morning's work; and his eyes were shining with joy in our
mutual appreciation of what he had done." In my gift-
copy is written, dated September 21, 1914 :

"We, too, have made this voyage together, and, in all happi
ness, known the winter North Atlantic, the pamperos off the Plate,
and the Sou 'west gales and Great West Wind Drift off the Horn.
And we ' made westing, ' as we have made westing in all the years
since first we loved."

"Lying on the beach at Waikiki," wrote a Honolulu
newspaperman, "I learned that 'The Mutiny of the Elsi-

258 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

nore' was written to illustrate how the blond white man
from the Northern countries of Europe is rapidly being
crowded out of America, and that as he disappears, he
will go down fighting to the last, but that he will go down
beneath the weight of the Latin, the Slav, and other South
ern European races that are pouring into America, whom
he can rule as long as he lives, but with whom he cannot
successfully compete in the continual struggle for exist
ence. ' '

Home from our blissful river-drifting, Jack plunged
deeper than ever into ranch development, the while we
honeymooned amidst all the quickening farm activities. A
"frosty honeymoon, " Jack laughed, for ice was in the
ground, and there was an unwonted snowfall. In March he
gave me "The Night-Born, " with this in its fly-leaf:

1 ' Dear My- Woman :

"The seasons come and go. The years slide together in the long
backward trail, and yet you and I remain, welded with our arms
about each other moving onward together and unafraid of any
future. "

In a new edition of "The Call of the Wild," illustrated
by Paul Bransom, he wrote :

"It was many dear years ago when I first gave you a copy of
this book — in the days when I was hearing a love call ; and never
has that same love called more loudly than it calls now in this
year 1913, when my arms are still full of you, and my heart still
full of you."

It was all a part of his yearning to escape from the world
at large. Several times, without self-consciousness, even
before others, he held out his arms to me when I came into
the living room — as if he must clasp something, some one
that came nearest to understanding his need.

THE BAD YEAE 259

To facilitate his heavy correspondence, a dictaphone was
added to our office equipment — a spring machine, in antici
pation of the installation of electricity. I was seriously
concerned at this innovation, realizing its threat toward
the old intimacy of working hours.

"But think, my dear," Jack explained, justly indeed,
"I don't have to wait for you; I can dictate to the damned
thing any moment, in bed, even, if I please, while you pursue
your precious beauty sleep !"

After which he practised on the "damned thing" for
an uninterrupted afternoon,, reeling off half a hundred
neglected letters. When I came to transcribe them, at the
end of each cylinder I was greeted with a love message in a
fair imitation of my husband's voice: "Her master's
voice!" giggled he. How could any one try to obstruct
the progress of such a being!

In April, he went to Los Angeles on moving-picture
business, but was back in three days: "I never stay very
long where you are not," he said upon returning.

In May "The Abysmal Brute," that "brief for the
purification of the prize-fight game," came from the Cen
tury Company, catching its author in a darker phase than
even I had guessed ; for when he put the little book into my
hands, I found this inside :

' ' The years pass, we live much, and yet, to me, I find but one
vindication for living, but one bribe for living — and that vindica
tion is you, the bribe is you.

"Your Lover,
"Jack London. "

And here is something about love :

"Woman, beyond all doubt, remains the biggest thing in the
world to-day. The love-motif is the highest thing that can exist
between normal humans. To me, existence is impossible without
love. Love does not lead nor direct. Love satisfies as no other thing
in human knowledge satisfied. Love is the ultimate benediction of

260 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

living. It ennobles ; it makes the impossible possible ; it makes life
worth living.7'

A portion of Jack's hypochondria might be laid to the
bodily distemper that was leading up to an acute attack
of appendicitis. I think he was subsequently in lighter
humor. The history of his recovery from the knife, against
illustrating that magnificent physical endownment, might be
written down as "uneventful" in the annals of surgery,
except for its astonishing rapidity.

On July 6, we rushed him to Oakland and into hospital.
On the 8th, Dr. William S. Porter operated. Four days
later, an important moving-picture conference was held in
Jack's room. Other afternoons were filled with callers,
and his room was banked in flowers. "Only," the bed-rid
den one grumbled sheepishly, "I wish men wouldn't bring
me flowers — somehow it mekes me feel silly." Frolich, the
sculptor, unwittingly mitigated the situation by contribut
ing an absurd corbel, a cowled monk in the ultimate throes
of seasickness, and Jack racked himself with mirth. News
paper men and women came and went, and headlines featur
ing "The Call of the Wild Appendix," and "Jack London
Takes the Count," beguiled his morning tray.

On the seventh day, the patient stood on his feet, then
inspected the building from a wheeled chair. Next morn
ing, Dr. Porter, in his own car, conveyed Jack London to the
house on Twenty-seventh Street. The obstreperous con
valescent insisted upon going out to dine the following
night, as well as to the theater, enjoyed a Turkish bath and
a cafe dinner on the tenth day after the operation ; and on
the twelfth he left for Los Angeles to jump into "the hot
test, hardest business fight" of his life with the wily but
ingratiating Hebrew, Mr. "Porchclimber." The twentieth
day beheld him at home and in the saddle — another tribute
to his own vitality and to the cunning of his surgeon friend.

Jack could not abide ether as an anaesthetic. This time

THE BAD YEAR 261

he was first given chloroform, and when, once unconscious,
ether was substituted, he resisted so violently that chloro
form again had to be resorted to.

With that prescience of the Builder that brooks no de
lay, Jack mortgaged everything in sight, even our cottage
and the new one he had erected for Eliza, to obtain funds
needful for his big aims. On August 18, with but $300 in
bank, and large obligations pressing, he negotiated another
mortgage in order to complete the Wolf House before win
ter. But I always knew, beyond questioning, that no matter
what hazards he seemed to be taking, he divined the way out.

The Bank placed an insurance on the Hill Ranch cover
ing half the amount loaned. There was no other insurance
on the huge purple-red pile, since every one agreed that
rock and concrete, massive beams and redwood logs with
the bark on, were practically fireproof unless ignited in a
dozen places, owing to the quadrangular construction and
cement partitions.

Nevertheless, three nights later, August 22, the entire
inflammable part of the high stone shell was destroyed. I
was awakened by voices from Jack's porch. Tiptoeing out,
.1 saw Eliza, by his bedside, point in the direction of the
Wolf House half a mile away, where flames and smoke rose
straight into the windless, star-drifted sky.

Teams were harnessed, and leaving the Japanese to
keep an eye on things at home, if incendiarism was in the
air, we drove leisurely across the Ranch. "What's the use
of hurry f" Jack demanded. "If that is the Big House
burning, nothing can stop it now ! ' '

All the countryside, that had come to feel a personal
pride and ownership in "Jack's House," had gathered or
was arriving. Public sentiment ran high: and I think,
had the criminal or criminals who fired it been detected
that night, there would have been a stringing-up to the
nearest limbs, in lusty frontier fashion.

262 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Already the beautiful red-tile roof had clattered down
inside the glowing walls, and the only care that need be ex
ercised was in regard to the adjacent forest. "Promise
me," I said to Jack, so lately out of hospital, "that you
won't forget yourself, and overdo." He made the pledge
and kept it, very quietly walking about and directing the
men.

"Why don't you cry, or get excited, or something, you
two I ' ' asked a neighbor. ' * You don 't seem to realize what 's
happened to you!"

"What's the use?" Jack repeated his thought. "It
won't rebuild the house. — Though it can be rebuilt!" he
swore cheerfully, purpose in his eye.

But uneraseably beneath our contained exterior lay the
vision of it six hours before, palpitating in the mid-sum
mer sunset light, when we had emerged on horseback from
the ravine Jack called his house-garden. He had burst out :

"How beautiful — Our House, Mate Woman! Did I tell
you that Harrison Fisher, after I brought him home from
the Jinks two weeks ago, told some one it was the most
beautiful house in the West?"

Yes, Jack laughed and buoyed up the spirits of the
Eanch while his dream castle ascended in lurid smoke that
hot August night. But when at four in the dawn, the tension
relaxed, and uppermost in his mind loomed the wicked, cruel,
senseless destruction of the only home he had ever made
for himself, he lay in my pitying arms and shook like a
child. After a few moments he stilled, and said :

"It isn't the money loss — though that is grave enough
just at this time. The main hurt comes from the wanton
despoiling of so much beauty."

A long pause, and then, referring to the recent death
of the bridegroom of a young friend :

"Do you know — thinking it all over, I'd be willing to go
through this whole night again, and many times, if it could
bring Tom back ! ' '

THE BAD YEAR 263

We never did learn whose hand applied the torch. I
had all but written ' ' assassin. ' ' For the razing of his house
killed something in Jack, and he never ceased to feel the
tragic inner sense of loss. To this day the ruins of amethys
tine stone, arch beyond arch, tower above tower, stand
mute yet appealing. Total strangers, not all of them women,
have wept before them, have cried out, "Poor Jack!"

From his immediate actions, however, none but Eliza
and I guessed the extent of his repining. Something had to
be done, and quickly. Forni, the master-mason, must be
taken in hand. He was like a father who had lost a child,
and in danger of losing his reason. Two of his men, the
big, blue-eyed Martinelli brothers, wandered around the
unapproachably hot ruins like spirits suddenly bereft of
Paradise, crossing their breasts and murmuring, "Mary!"
1 1 Christ!" Even Jack had to turn away when the man
who had nailed the last Spanish tile before the conflagra
tion, said with wet eyes : "Well, my roof never leaked, any
way!"

The fire was on Friday. On Monday, Jack had the en
tire crew putting up a splendid retaining-wall of mossy
gray stone, that had long been in his eye, on the right of a
driveway to the smoking walls which came to be known
simply as The Euins. Eliza was scarred to the soul by the
sudden wiping out of her work — she had superintended the
building from start to finish; but she met Jack whole
heartedly in showing the workmen and the country round
about that the end of the world had not come. It was when
we came to readjust that the loss became most evident.

My diary calls it up:

"We lay aside notes and samples, and plans drawn for
this and that, and feel as if the bottom had fallen out of
everything — light, queer, unreal. ' '

I have been asked why Jack London, socialist, friend
of the common man, built so large a house. And I have been
glad that there were those who asked, for it has ever been

264 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

my suspicion that some one who waited not to ask, set the
brand to that house.

How shall I say? Jack could not traffic in small things,
any more than he could deftly handle trifling objects with
his fingers. All he did was in a large way. His boyish
memories were of moving from one small, inadequate
wooden domicile to another. Being what he could not help
being, and remaining true to himself, lover of large and
enduring things, he must invite spaciousness and solidity —
room to breathe in, and for others to breathe in. The an
cient frame cottage in which on the ranch he lived and
worked and received all men at his table, was entirely dis
proportionate to his needs. Being so indefatigable and sys
tematic a worker and thinker he required everything to his
hand. A smoothly running domestic menage made for
efficiency in other matters. Here, where he had to live dur
ing the three years while the Wolf House building went
on intermittently, the rooms were crammed and jammed
and spilling over with the very implements of his many
branches of endeavor. Only the combined efforts of the
two of us, and later a third, a secretary, made it anything
less than distracting for Jack to function in the cramped
apartments. Three-quarters of his library was packed away
molding in the big stone barn half a mile away, and many
the time he could not lay his hand upon some volume espe
cially needed.

Wanderer, yet deeply fond of his own home, a place
for the permanence of his treasures — curios, blankets, books,
"gear" — he sighed with content knowing that in the big
house there would be a story in one wing devoted to the
library ; above that, his roomy work-den ; on the first floor,
dining room and kitchen. The middle story of the opposing
wing was to be mine — a place where I might retreat to rest
and call my soul my own when the outside world was too
much within our walls. Above, Jack's sleeping tower
reared. Beneath mine were the guest chambers, and, still

THE BAD YEAR 265

below, servants ' quarters and the like. The connecting link
of these two wings formed a two-story living-room, partially
flanked by a gallery ; and underneath this high hall lay what
Jack termed the "stag room," where no female might ven
ture except by especial ukase from the lords of creation who
might lounge and play billiards and otherwise disport them
selves therein. The house foundation measured roughly
eighty feet from corner to corner.

It should be thought of, that house, in relation to Jack,
not as a mansion, but as a big cabin, a lofty lodge, a hos
pitable tepee, where he, simple and generous despite all
his baffling intricacy, could stietch himself and beam upon
you and me and all the world that gathered by his log-
fires. I know a friend who appreciated this largeness of
the man, and who with man 's tenderness calls him the Big
Chief.

To one who suggests that this house would have been a
recreation place for guests ' ' acquired by the sole reason of
Jack's fame and prosperity," I am able to protest that it
would have been the contrary — in the Wolf House as in the
rickety cottage, our transient household would have been
made up mostly of the wanderers, the intellectual (and
otherwise) hoboes, sometimes washed, sometimes not, while
the master drove his pen for the multitude without. As
always, these would have come to sit with us, and furnish
grist for Jack's unsleeping brain-mill. That was the sort
of "inspiration," to quote my inquirer, he would have con
tinued to draw about him "within such walls of stone."
Why, the very form of the rough rock hacienda was an in
vitation, with its embracing wings, its sunny pool between
the wide, arched corridors and grape-gnarled pergola ! The
reason that seekers after the truth about Jack London find
more reminder of him in the simple red boulder that lies
upon his ashes than in the aching ruins of his great house,
is because they do not know the all of Jack London. He

266 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

was a man before all else — big and solid, and spacious, and
unvaryingly true to himself.

And so with his ranching. There, too, he wrought large
ly : ' ' No picayune methods for me, ' ' he would vow. * l When
I go into the silence, I want to know that I have left be
hind me a plot of land which, after the pitiful failures of
others, I have made productive. . . . Can't you see? Oh,
try to see ! — In the solution of the great economic problems
of the present age, I see a return to the soil. I go into farm
ing because my philosophy and research have taught me to
recognize the fact that a return to the soil is the basis of
economics ... I see my farm in terms of the world, and
the world in terms of my farm ... Do you realize that I
devote two hours a day to writing and ten to farming! — my
thought-work, my preparation, at night, and when I am out-
of-doors."

Similar revelation of himself he gave on the witness
stand only a few days before his death, when suit had been
brought to restrain him from using his share of the waters
of a creek boundary much needed in his scheme of agri
culture. But in the whole sad affair, which contributed its
weight toward his break-down, not one iota of understand
ing was accorded him by the prosecutors, among whom were
some near and dear to him.

From time to time I would ask: "When, in the years to
come, do you think you will ever pull even, financially, with
your ranch project ?" And it was always with a laugh that
he would return: "Never, my dear — at least, I want and
expect to have the place eventually sustain itself. That
would be the natural object. But it will never make money
for me, because there is so much developing I want to keep
on doing, endless experiments I want to make."

A noted socialist lecturer, with misapprehension and
prejudice in his eye, spent a day or two on the ranch. "At
last I see," said he. "I was wrong. In your work here, as
you unfold it to me, I see a social creation!"

THE BAD YEAR 267

Once more, let me impress : temperamentally Jack Lon
don was a Builder of books, of houses, of roads, of soil, of
things that would outlast merely temporary uses. My house
will be standing, act of God permitting, for a thousand years.
My boat, act of God permitting, will be intact and afloat a
hundred years or five hundred years hence. Little call to
point out that he did not build for himself alone.

4 'Who will come after us, Mate Woman!" he looked into
the distances. "Who will reap what I have sown here in
this almighty sweet land? You and I will be forgotten.
Others will come and go ; these, too, shall pass, as you and
I shall pass, and others take their places, each telling his
love, as I tell you, that life is sweet ! ' '

He was fond, at this time, of having me play Arthur
Footers Rubaiyat Suite, particularly the section illustrat
ing

"How sultan after sultan, with his pomp,

Abode his destined hour, and went his way."

And Macdowell's "Sea Pieces" swept him out upon the
tide of his dreams.

True to his determination not to be downcast over the
houseburning, Jack redoubled ranch operations. "I am
the sailor on horseback!" chanted he. "Watch my dust!
. . . Oh, I shall make mistakes a-many ; but watch my dream
come true. ' ' And, as he loved the name of Sailor, Skipper,
Captain, for the love he bore the sea, so he now loved as
well to be greeted Farmer, what of his overmastering de
sire to make blossom the exhausted wilderness. Beauty, in
his precincts, began to reveal itself more and more in the
light of tillable soil, of food-getting efficiency. "Don't
grieve about the clearing of that field, or that little clump
of scrubby redwoods," he would say. "We get used to a
certain view, and the idea of altering it is untenable.
But when it is altered, we are surprised how soon we adjust,
and even forget. Remember, there is endless wildwood

268 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

farther back — it isn 't as if I were depriving you of it. Try
to dream with me my dreams of fruitful acres. Do not be a
slave to an old conception. Try to realize what I am
after/1

In step with the day-dream went the visions of his
slumber, and he loved them: "I am a keen dreamer, and I
love to dream. It seems to me that my life is doubled by the
amount of dreaming I do every night. ' ' Often he recounted
to me a story of long hours spent in a verdant land where he
seemed to be proprietor, rolling country where, just be
yond each hill, great schemes of agricultural betterment
were flourishing. Many times, he said, I was by his side :
but for the most part he would be instructing intelligent
foremen how to carry out his ideas. This trend in his un
conscious mind increased until the day of his death.

The former quiet of the ranch gave place to a pervasive
hum of important matters afoot. Rending blasts of dyna
mite far afield spoke of a new era in the somnolent order
of the old land of the Spaniards. Jack founded his pure
bred English Shire stable by the purchase of nothing less
than Neuadd Hillside, grand champion of California, and
once prize-winner in England. He weighed a ton, and was
wondrously shaped withal. Cockerington Princess, cham
pion of her own sex, also came to gladden our eyes, while
the converting into stables of theretofore unused stone win
ery buildings went on apace. Into each barn, for the men
to scan and heed, was posted a long list of rules borrowed
from a great western express corporation for the care and
use of the horses.

" Although the tails of these imported horses are docked,
we won't dock their colts, " Jack remarked on the day the
two grand beasts, pranked out show-fashion in colored
worsted, were unloaded from the stock "palace car" amidst
much comment in Glen Ellen. "Do you know," he asked
me, "why horses like those aren't common sights on the
country roads of the United States? I'll tell you: because

THE BAD YEAR 269

our farmers are so stupidly wasteful about saving feed!
I mean just that. Instead of crowding the development of
a colt, particularly the first year, by care and feeding, he
turns it out to grub for itself in pasture. That first year is
like the first year of any other baby. It's what so vitally
counts. ' 9

Six days before his voice was silenced, Jack said some
thing like the following to an interviewer :

"What is the difference between this good team and
that team of scrubs? Man alive! What is the difference
between that field, as it is now, and the same field as it was
two years ago? What is the difference between anything
that is strong and fine and well arranged — be it words or
stones or trees or ideas or what not — and the same elements
as they were in their unorganized weakness? Man — the
brain of man, the effort that man had put into man's su
preme task — organizing! That is the work of man, work
that is worth a man's doing — to take something second-rate
and chaotic and to put himself into it until it becomes
orderly and first-rate and fine. ' '

He was, in short, really far more interested in intro
ducing better farming into Sonoma, County and the country
at large than he was in leaving behind masterpieces of
literature.

As usual, for him to think out a thing was to see it done ;
and early he had learned, with his instinct for teaching and
for effort-saving, to instruct others now to act upon what
he thought out. Thus, he was pressing his sister hard and
ever harder, firing her with the depth and breadth of his
outlook. There were long, grilling hours of discussion —
he trying to inculcate his principles, she giving him the bene
fit of what her practical judgment, regardless of books,
prompted her to do.

Here are two loose notes among his many:

" Please, please, know that I carry only general principles in
my head, and do not carry details/'

270 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"You must always allow me the latitude of a mind that is
filled with a million other things that have nothing whatever to do
with this ranch, so that when I query, I query honestly and sin
cerely and without ulterior purpose, so that all I want is what I
ask for, and I don't want guessed replies to what you guess are
ulterior questions on my part. I ain't got no ulterior questions or
motives, but, just once in a while, I have a legitimate, overwhelm
ing desire to know what is, which what is has occurred during my
periods of being away from ranch, of being immersed in problems
which have nothing whatever to do with ranch, save that they
enable me to keep ranch going. I make my living out of the world.
I must 90% of my time devote myself to the world. Please, please,
give me that 90% latitude of ignorance and of non-remembrance
of the per cent, of ranch happenings that hit you every moment of
every day and that hit me possibly once in six months. Meet me in
at least a 9 to 1 percentage sympathy. "

Discussion but infrequently took place between Jack
and the workmen, for lie was fond of learning by argument.
Little they could teach him. And so for the most part he
kept from contact with them. " Eliza is the captain I have
picked out to run this particular ship of mine," he would
say to me, repository of his deductions upon each situation
as it unfolded, "and you know how much I interfere be
tween captain and man ! ' ' But there was often the irk of
those who knew less than Jack, who tried to hold him back :
* ' You can't make it work, Mr. London. We have never done
it this way."

"Why not?" lie would blaze. "Why can't I make it
work? Do you think that I learn nothing from the greatest
specialists in your profession, when I put in whole nights,
month upon month, studying them? What do you know
about government bulletins, government deductions based
upon scientific principles that have been put to work?"

I take the following from a transcript of evidence in
the water-suit before referred to :

THE BAD YEAR 271

" Aren't you a good enough agriculturist to estimate an
acre of ground?" was the question put by opposing counsel.

"No," drawled Jack. "We all have our weaknesses. I
never could master an acre, by looking at it. I always send
somebody out to measure it for me. ' ' And to the question,
i ' Have you ever acted as a farmer, practically tilling the soil
yourself!" he explained as below:

"I have never had my hands on the handles of a plow
in my life, but I know more about plowing than any plow
man who ever worked for me. I have acquired practically
every bit of my knowledge from the books. I never was a
graduate of an university ; I never finished the first half of
my freshman year at a university; yet I have thought it
nothing to face a group of thirty or forty professors ham-
mer-and-tongs on philosophy, sociology, and all the other
'ologies — the group including David Starr Jordan and
others of the same high intellectual caliber. I was able to
do that and hold a table of debate — I, who had never been
through a university — because I had gotten my knowledge
from the same books they had got their knowledge from.
The same with plowing and other branches of farm knowl
edge. I state that I am eminently fitted from my knowledge
of the books."

He went on: "My knowledge of agriculture and farm
ing is also derived from actual contact with the soil — look
ing at it, on occasion hiring experts to come and tell me their
diagnoses of these thick soils or bad soils or wrong soils.
I find very often that they disagree with one another ; then
I go back to my books arid find the right clue, applying
it, making my experiments year after year, whether in
fertilizer or in methods of cultivation or drainage or the
thousand factors that enter into successful tillage."

His aloof supervision was expressed in notes to be
passed on. "But see that they are returned and preserved,
so that I may refer to them at any time."

From a sheaf I choose almost at random:

272 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

" Watch out for the first unexpected rain catching lots of our
equipment exposed. As for instance the wood-saw and engine.
Months in the sun and fog and dew have not done them any good.
A rain will do worse."

"Who left half a dozen sacks of cement in rain to spoil under
roofless section of rock-crusher house?"

"Near rock-crusher is a shingled roof section, lying flat on the
ground, going to hell. ' '

"In any new building operations around the ranch, such as
the bath-house, etc., are the men who do the work told to keep the
nails cleaned up? Because if they are so told, and continue to let
the nails lie around, fire them. To-day it was King who was lamed ;
some time ago it was one of the Shire mares. To-morrow it may be
Neuadd. Is 'father' to sit back and pay for the Veterinary, for
the stallion man's time, for the crippled horse's time?"

And first, last, and always, stood his creed:
"What we do must be adequate and permanent/'
His plaint to me, aside, when confronted with the
obstinate wall of farmer-brains smaller than his own, was
like this :

i i The reason a man works for me, is because he cannot
work for himself. Stupid boobs, most of them, who do not
wake up to avail themselves of the fund of knowledge ready
for the asking. In the matter of government reports, over
and above the price of a postcard of inquiry, knowledge is
as free as air. ' '

Out of his despair with the incapacity of employes, their
unwillingness to be educated, he coined the phrase "Down
the hill," which meant the discharge of those who could
neither learn nor take orders. "The more I see of men,"
he would apostrophize, "the more I turn to the land; yet,
in order to manipulate that land, I must deal with those
very men who hurt me so with their blind ineffectiveness
and lack of foresight. And they try to teach me, who spend
my nights with the books. My work on this land, and my
message to America, go hand in hand!" And he would

THE BAD YEAR 273

ride away, waving his cowboy quirt, bent upon appraising
a worn-out plot of ground with the intention of reclaiming
it.

Of course, his experiment was being advertised far and
wide by the press. He had, as one farm magazine de
clared, 1 1 ideas on the profession of farming that will do the
world more good than all the stories he ever could write. "

"When I bought one hundred and twenty-nine acres
near Glen Ellen nine years ago I knew nothing of farming, ' '
Jack gave out. "I bought the place mostly for its beauty,
as a place to live and write in.

" About forty acres was cleared and I tried to raise
hay for my horses, but soon found I could scarcely get the
seed back. The soil had been worn out ; it had been farmed
for years by old-fashioned methods of taking everything
off and putting nothing back.

"The region was a back-water district. Most of the
ranchers were poor and hopeless ; no one could make any
money ranching there, they told me. They had worked the
land out and their only hope was to move on somewhere else
and start to work new land out and destroy its value.

' ' I began to study the problem, wondering why the fertil
ity of this land had been destroyed in forty or fifty years
when land in China has been tilled for thousands of years,
and is still fertile.

"My neighbors were typified by the man who said:
"You can't teach me anything about farming; I've worked
three farms out ! Which is as wise as the remark of the wo
man who said she guessed she knew all there was to know
about raising children — hadn't she buried five?

"I adopted the policy of taking nothing off the ranch.
I raised stuff and fed it to the stock. I got the first manure
spreader ever seen up there, and so put the fertilizer back
on the land before its strength had leaked out. I began to
get registered stock, and now I sell a blooded cow at nine
months for $40 and an old-fashioned rancher comes along

274 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

and wonders why he has to feed a scrub cow for two years
and sell her for less than $40.

"An old-fashioned farmer has thirty milch cows and
works eighteen hours a day taking care of them and milking
them and can make no money. An up-to-date man comes
along, buys the place, pays $10 for a Babcock tester and
buys milk scales. Eight away he gets rid of ten of the cows
as non-productive, and he makes more with two-thirds of
the work."

Jack's disappointment that so much of his main ' ' punch "
in "The Valley of the Moon" had been lost by wholesale
deletion, in serial publication, was mended by the way the
published book was received by the agricultural maga
zines. One of them declared that it "ought to be adopted
for a text book by our 'back to the farm/ missionaries.
Besides being a firstrate love-story, it is replete with knowl
edge of rural conditions. "With that familiar universal
touch of Jack London's, this book, while essentially Cali-
f ornian, applies and appeals to America, at large. We won
der that it has not been made a part of the curriculum at the
agricultural colleges. It is worth dozens of lectures some
times delivered to students."

"Why isn't 'The Valley of the Moon' the 'Great Ameri
can Novel'!" a correspondent wanted to know. "It lets
light in upon the question of why the old American stock
is dying out. The ignorant, unlettered foreigners, Italians,
Japanese, Scandinavian, and the rest, crowd out the good
old American, because the American will not, for one
thing, if he can help it, live the way the foreigner does.
And because, also, the American will not use his head for the
improvement of the land. Eesult, the carcass of the good
old superior American fertilizes his own land for the crowd
ing, thrifty, crafty foreigner."

That one man is more fit than another to become a law
giver, Jack London has laid down in "The Bones of Kahe-
kili," written five months before he died, one of seven

THE BAD YEAR 275

stories in "On the Makaloa Mat." The old Hawaiian com
moner asks :

"Here is something stronger than life, stronger than
woman, but what is it — and why?" And Jack, over and
above his personal desire and sacrifices toward the masses,
speaks his unwilling but inevitable conclusion through the
mouth of Hardman Pool :

"It is because most men are fools, and therefore must
be taken care of by the few men who are wise. Such is the
secret of chiefship. In all the world are chiefs over men.
In all the world that has been have there ever been chiefs,
who must say to the mary fool men: 'Do this; do not do
that. Work, and work a/3 we tell you, or your bellies will
remain empty and you will perish. . . . You must be peace-
abiding and decent, and blow your noses. You must be early
to bed of nights, and up early in the morning to work if
you would have beds to sleep in and not roost in trees like
the silly fowls. This is the reason for the yam-planting
and you must plant now. We say now, to-day, and not pic
nicking and hulaing to-day and yam-planting to-morrow
or some other day of the many careless days. . . . All this
is life for you, because you think but one day at a time,
while we, your chiefs, think for you all days and far days
ahead."

And the old man : i i Yes, it is sad that I should be born
a common man and live all my days a common man."

To which Hardman Pool: "That is because you were
of yourself common. When a man is born common, and is
by nature uncommon, he rises up and overthrows the chiefs
and makes himself chief over the chiefs. Why do you not
run my ranch, with its many thousands of cattle, and shift
the pastures by the rainfall, and pick the bulls, and arrange
the bargaining and selling of the meat to the sailing ships
and war vessels and the people who live in the Honolulu
houses, and fight with lawyers, and help make laws, and
even tell the King what is wise for him to do and what is

276 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

dangerous? Why does not any man do this that I do?
Any man of all the men who work for me, feed out of my
hand, and let me do their thinking for them? — me, who
works harder than any of them, who eats no more than any
of them, and who can sleep on no more than one lauhala mat
at a time like any of them ? ' '

"I am out of the cloud . . ." the old man says. "We
are the careless ones of the careless days who will not plant
the yam in season if our alii does not compel us, who will not
think one day for ourselves. . . . ' '

There were timely trips into the interior — Sacramento,
Modesto, and to the University of California stock farm at
Davis. Eliza Shepard went along further to imbibe and
abet the game her brother wanted to play; and Jack came
speedily to accept her judgment in the selection of livestock,
for her choices came to be the prize-winners at State and
County fairs.

A concrete-block silo, twelve feet in diameter, the first
of two, and the first of their kind in California, was rising
half a hundred feet into the air near the old cowbarns. Jack
put his own and his neighbors' corn into the first silo that
was finished, and neglected his writing to take a hand in the
fascinating work of feeding the cutter. Houseguests and
servants alike were unable to keep out of the busy scene,
and remained to help. Their host boasted : ' l No material
comes up the hill except cement. My own machinery has
done the crushing of the rock that my own tools and dyna
mite have got out of my own land, and that my own draft
animals have hauled. My own mixer has made the mortar.
My ten-inch drain-tile for the alfalfa fields yonder, has been
made right here on the ground. And all this paraphernalia
will build a dam at the mouth of that natural sink up-
mountain, to impound 7,000,000 gallons of water for irri
gation. And think of the pressure for fire protection I1'

The " piggery " which Jack invented, and which was
built during our fall Roamer cruise, became famous the

THE BAD YEAR 277

world over, not only among farmers but with curious lay
men as well. Entirely of rock and concrete, it is on a cir
cular plan, surrounding, with graveled driveway between,
a handsome tower wherein feed is mixed and distributed
to the " suites " of apartments, with their individual run
ways, that came to house, firstj the white Ohio Improved
Chester hogs, and later, Jack's choice of what he deemed
a sturdier breed for our climate, the red Duroc Jerseys.
A system of flushing and antiseptizing both here and in
the barns, rendered premises and vicinity " sweet as a
nut," to quote an English visitor who lately registered in
the tower guest-book. Crowning a knoll for perfect drain
age, surrounded by blossomy madrono trees with bark like
Korean red lacquer and glossy leaves so resembling the
magnolia, this farm yard " sermon in stone " is an object
of distinct beauty.

Jack had conceived the idea of demonstrating that he
could restore exhausted grainfields by a system of terracing
on a large scale — in his own words, ' * farming on the level. ' T

"You increase the organic content by levelling, pre
venting the destructive erosive effects that draw from it
the organic content — so that instead of one-tenth of one
meager crop a year you can grow three rich crops a year.

"The hillsides are first ploughed along contour lines,
and at intervals, depending on the slope of the land, balks,
or small ridges, are thrown up. The process is slow, but
its advantages from the start are great. Eains are held
back to sink into the soil instead of rushing down the hill
sides, tearing out great gullies and carrying rich soil down
the streams to the ocean. . . . We have been letting our
rich hillsides go to waste, and by ignorant cultivation have
increased erosion rather than prevented it. The method I
have outlined will restore even impoverished hillsides and
turn them into productive fields. ' '

A dozen acres of old French prune trees were brought
up to standard ; vineyards, once famous, that had gone too

278 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

long neglected, were uprooted and given over to barley;
and the barley was planted with inoculated vetch.

Beehives, likewise ducks, pigeons, geese, chickens, and
a few pheasants, made their appearance on the Hill place
as a side issue.

I heard Jack say that ' ' the best blocks of vineyard did
not have more than seventy-five per cent, of the vines stand
ing when I took over the ranch. In some cases three out
of every five vines were missing." But in time he had
those "best blocks" yielding as formerly.

And here are his intentions with regard to fertilizing:

"The Chinese have farmed for forty centuries without
using commercial fertilizer. I am rebuilding worn-out hill
side lands that were worked out and destroyed by our
wasteful California pioneer farmers. I am not using com
mercial fertilizer. I believe the soil is our one indestructi
ble asset, and by green manures, nitrogen-gathering cover
crops, animal manures, rotation of crops, proper tillage
and draining, I am getting results which the Chinese have
demonstrated for forty centuries.

"We are just beginning to farm in the United States.
The Chinese knew the how but not the why. We know the
why, but we're dreadfully slow getting around to the how."

Before long this modern husbandman had revolutionized
the sleepy neighborhood, to say nothing of his employes
upon whom he sprung timesheets, rigorously insisting that
these be properly filled in each night. "Any man who isn't
willing to give an account of his work and time, is welcome
to go down hill," was Jack's ultimatum.

A blacksmith in the village went out of business. Jack
relieved him of the entire establishment, which was in
stalled in one of our cool winery buildings, pleasantly shaded
by a "spreading chestnut tree," while a horseshoer and
general blacksmith was added to the payroll. The village
thought little about the transaction until a paper in a rival
community came out with :

THE BAD YEAR 279

* ' Good boy, Jack ! Why not make another trip with your
wagon and take the rest of Glen Ellen up to the ranch 1 ' '

Then and always, when asked "What do you call your
place ?" the owner replied, "The Ranch of Good Inten
tions. ' ' Develop it as he might, it seemed to remain only in
its merest beginning, in view of his ultimate hopes.

An old neighbor, whose boundaries carve sharply into
our property, often suggested that Jack buy him out, lock,
stock, and barrel. "But there are too many buildings on
your place, for one thing, " Jack would object. "It would
cost too much to demolish them ! ' ' But once he said : " If I
ever do buy the Wegener place, I'll turn it over, buildings
and all, to my intellectual hobo friends. The community
would wax, and oh, my ! " As he had written to Anna :

"Some day I shall build an establishment, invite them
all, and turn them loose upon one another. Such a mingling
of castes and creeds and characters could not be duplicated.
The destruction would be great !"

It has always been a sadness to me how, as before
hinted, Jack's most intimate acquaintances, given every op
portunity to view the magnitude of his interest in agricul
ture, without exception discounted the importance of it to
him, and vice versa. In all the memorial gatherings met so
generously after his passing, it never entered the mind of
a single friend to whom Jack had expounded his dear am
bition, to make mention of the great book he had begun to
write upon the mountain fields. I, aghast at the vital omis
sion, protested, and appealed to the lovers of his memory
not to forget. The explanation dawned upon me before
ever it was put in ^ords by one, a sociologist, who had no
inkling of the bearing of agronomy upon economics :

"You see, Jack's agriculture did not impress me as it
should have done — probably because I have no interest in
agriculture. ' '

In September we made our first visit to the State Fair
at Sacramento. Jack was averse to showing his own stock,

280 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

holding that putting an animal in ' l show condition ' ' was a
harmful process. His presence at the Fair was for the pur
pose of getting in touch with "the other fellow" to see
what he was doing in the matter of raising draft horses,
beef cattle and hogs.

It was during this absence Jack told me that at intervals
for months past he had had warning flutters in the region of
the heart that gave him sudden moments of foreboding.
" Haven't you noticed that I have got into the habit of
laying my palm over my heart!" he asked. "I didn't real
ize I was, until I happened to catch myself at it." He also
told me that there had been no report, after an examination
by their physician, from a certain life insurance firm to
whom he had applied some time back for an additional
policy. I, to offset the tremor of my own heart at his in
telligence, eliminated one reason after another for his con
dition, and finally asked if it might be laid to his excessive
cigarette inhaling. But he did not take to the diagnosis.
After a couple of years the symptoms disappeared.

In mid-October we "joy-sailed on the good, old, dear,
and forever dear Roomer," to quote her skipper, spending
one of our most care-free seasons, with the resilience that
fortunate souls exhibit after an excess of work and emo
tional endurance. From my diary: "Let's look at the
chart we've sailed off," says Jack at two p. m., after our
exciting run in a howling norther. Things broke; we
missed stays twice on one tack, and went aground in the
glistening tules, that were laid flat by the wind. Spouting
surf on lee shores. A big scow aground. Ducks flying low.
Sierras white with snow, and Mt. Diablo and its range clear-
cut sapphire. We did not have a ribbon of canvas on the
Roomer except three-reefed spanker and our dandy jib.
She eats right up into the wind with that big jib.

' ' In spite of all that has happened this year, ' ' Jack re
viewed, surveying water and sky with calm, sure eyes,
"somehow it seems now as if it has been one of my hap-

THE BAD YEAR 281

piest — at least, when I think what I have started on the
Beauty Eanch ! — At any rate, ' ' he finished, pulling the old
Tarn over his fore-top, " there has been no boredom in it
all — no danger of rusting/'

One morning in the midst of his work he burst out :

" I 'm going to live a hundred years ! ' '

"Yes! Why!"

* ' Because I want to ! "

"It's a good reason — couldn't be bettered. But let me
remind you that you're likely to become a widower!"

' ' That is a consideration, ' ' reaching for me. " I'll have
to think it over!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

NEW YORK ; MEXICO ; ROAMER
1914

FOR us, ending one year and beginning another aboard
ship was the acme of good fortune. The holidays,
spent partly ashore while the cook remained to guard the
Roomer where she lay moored to one city wharf or another,
were full of cheer. The "Porchclimber" episode settled,
our future looked brighter, though Jack remarked more
than once: "I'm riding to a fall, financially; but I'm not
worrying — you've never yet seen me stay down long. I'll
work harder than ever!"

Our New Year was ushered in at the Saddle Rock restau
rant. Two nights before Christmas, with a big southeaster
blowing, Jack and Nakata got me into an evening gown
aboard the yacht where she rolled at Lombard Street wharf
in San Francisco, then rowed me to a float, from which we
mounted to water-front street and taxi, to attend the house-
warming of friends uptown. In the early hours we were
back, and casting off, on the way to Sausalito. A terrific
ebb was running, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief when he
had his vessel safely clear of the docks and speeding on
the ebb, before the gale, under a little shred of a reefed jig
ger. When, not far from Sausalito, we ran into the great
run-out that tears down through Raccoon Straits to the
Golden Gate, it seemed as if the tiny yawl could not possibly
make it across. Jack, in his most congenial element, was on
the pinnacle of exhilaration. And in fifty-five minutes the
thirty-foot craft, under that rag of canvas, had made a

282

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 283

passage that regularly takes the huge screw-ferryboats
thirty-five.

Threading his way among the tossing sloops and
schooners and motor boats at anchor off the yacht clubs
at Sausalito, Jack navigated over the mud flats, well on the
way into Mill Valley, where in the falling tide he laid the
Roamer in the mud and went to sleep for the afternoon,
upon his lips the contented murmur, "This is the Life!
WeVe got all others skinned to death, Mate!" The next
day, Christmas, Nakata rowed us to a railroad station on
the shore, and we dined with friends in Mill Valley. And on
the 26th we were cruising once more.

While lying off Point Eichmond, Jack developed an ear
ache, and with bandaged head called upon a doctor. In no
time the dailies came out with an exciting story of how, in
a blow, Jack London had been knocked senseless by the
mainboom, while his wife bravely and cleverly brought the
vessel to safe anchorage! Jack was aggrieved out of all
apparent proportion to the matter; but the reason was that
he so especially prided himself upon never having unsea-
rnanlike accidents.

He became interested in Richmond real estate to the
extent of buying a lot, thereby branding himself as a
" booster " for the new harbor subdivision of the Ellis
Landing and Dock Company.

Just as we began congratulating ourselves that certain
hindrances had been overridden, and upon the general out
look for the New Year, fresh trouble broke that necessitated
Jack 's jumping out for New York within twenty-four hours,
leaving the yacht at San Rafael, where the ill news had
found us looking over ground familiar to our childhood.
There was much I must attend to at home owing to the
suddenness of his departure, and so our first long separa
tion took place.

"While I'm straightening out this snarl, I can be look
ing into other details that need attention, such as advances

284 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

from the publishers, " Jack reminded me. "I'll be having
good news for you soon, I hope." He often arranged for
advances, either in bulk, or in monthly payments, upon con
templated work.

The "snarl/7 which took him over a month to smooth
out, was with reference to dramatic rights in one of his
novels. An old friend had held these rights for some years
without having made a successful showing. Moving pic
tures had never been considered in the days Jack had signed
contracts for speaking performances, and there were men
who tried to befog the issue; hence it behooved Jack, now
interested in cinema productions, to clear his way of mis
understanding.

But his friend had entered into a dramatic contract for
a production of the novel in question, and borrowed money
against future box office receipts, which later did not appear
to be imminent. The agent was willing to release the play
wright, but to the tune of forty thousand dollars. Jack,
appalled by the ridiculous sum, bent all his powers to beat
down the ' ' robber. ' ' It took him four weeks, and in the end
he resorted to what he called his "play acting " to bring
about the signing of a "decent" release of the rights.
Early in the combat, I would have this sort of message:
"Outlook dark," or "Situation ticklish," or "Nothing good
to write." But his old unnatural condition when in New
York seemed to be absent.

"To hell with New York," he wrote in the midst of this
and other difficulties that beset. "I am here to master this
Babylon and its sad cave-dwellers, not to be mastered!"

Later: "Hereafter, either before or after Roamer
winter trip, my impression is that you and I will spend a
month in New York. ' '

One night in a triple collision of taxicabs, he came near
losing his life. A certain manager of burlesque had taken
him to the playhouse, and afterward introduced him to
the leading lights, three of whom the two men undertook

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 285

to escort to their homes. When the cars crashed Jack found
himself at the bottom of the heap of kindling-wood that had
been his cab, his mouth full of glass, and with a sense
of suffocation, since the other four passengers con
tributed to the weight. Aside from minor cuts and bruises,
the party escaped uninjured, and in some way avoided re
vealing their identity, so that the newspaper clippings Jack
sent lacked all names. The theatrical man longed to have
the event featured with " scare-head " lines, for the adver
tisement of his star, but Jack would have none of it.

"I'd have looked well," he grumbled to me, "with the
report flashed all over the country that I'd been * joy-riding'

with a bunch af actresses ! I've never been joy-riding in

my life, ' ' he teased ; ' ' but I 'm going some time, for I '11 never
be satisfied until I come home to you with a pink-satin
slipper in my pocket!"

Whatever else Jack London did or did not do in New
York City, he always spent much time upon the theatres.
About this time he enthusiastically applauded the idea of
the Little Theatre, and hoped that San Francisco would
take up the idea. Some time before the breaking of the
Great War, friends were promulgating a widely ramified
plan for a new opera house and conservatory in San Fran
cisco, and Jack made regular contributions to the pro
moters. So far, nothing has come of it.

Having succeeded in obtaining a "decent" release of the
dramatic rights in his book, and made some very satisfac
tory agreements for New York, he wired: "General future
never looked brighter."

A word as to the "play-acting" which caused the "rob
ber" to throw up his hands, or, rather put his hand to
the signing of the "decent release." Jack, partly as a
whim, partly in order to compose undisturbed, had hidden
himself in a notorious hostelry of the "theatrical tender
loin." When he had telephoned to his publisher to send his
money, that person cried out, "Great Scott, man! What

286 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

are you doing in a house like that! I'll have to bring it my
self I"

Jack decided to inveigle the enemy into his room. He en
deavored to turn the tables, but Jack, pleading indisposi
tion, also that he was too rushed to come out, since he
must leave for California sooner than he had planned, con
trived to gain the other's consent to call at an early fore
noon hour. He then prepared the stage and made up for
the impish part he intended to play:

"You should have seen me," he giggled, "I was a
sight to throw the fear of God into any highwayman of his
feather. I had sized him up, you see.

"For two days I purposely let my beard grow, and you
know how black it comes out. I opened my pa jama-coat so
that the mat of hair showed on my chest. And of course I
left out my upper teeth, mussed up my head and wore an
eyeshade. I was not pretty.

"So, when the clerk 'phoned up that he was below, I
said, 'Send him right up.' He answered, 'he's stepped
outside. ' ' Outside, ' says I, ' what f or ? ' 'I don 't know — he
said he'd wait for you there. 'Tell him,' I ordered, 'That
I'm in bed, and can't come down.'

"Well, when his tap came, I sat up in bed, and the high-
arm chair I had placed for him had its back to the door so
that if he tried to escape me he'd be in an awkward posi
tion getting out of his chair to do it. It sounds awful,

I can see from your face, Mate, ' ' Jack interpolated. i ' But
remember, I had wrestled for weeks with him. He had even
agreed to my figures and terms, and promised to send me
the release, and then I would wait for days without a word,
marking time, when I wanted to go home. It was my sheer
whimsey to bring him to his senses in this fantastic way. My
God ! It was ten thousand times more legitimate than his
slimy methods and those of his kind !

"To get back. He came in, trying not to look queer
when he saw the object I was — haggard from the dark

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 287

growth on my chin and neck, hair showing on my chest, and
a ghastly toothless smile of welcome! In his hand was
the document, which I took from him and glanced over.
And every little while I looked aside to one or the other of
my fists, as if gloating over them. As I talked with him
without appearing to study him I took in his sick, scared
face and soul. He'd have given anything not to have got
himself into that chair.

11 And then, I went over the whole business again, all we
had talked in our many interviews, and he finally consented
to release for a tithe of his original claims. He said :

" 1 1 '11 go right to my office to make the change, and send
you the agreement immediately. '

"I had waited for just that, and didn't mean that he
should elude me again. Said I :

" 'You'll sign that paper right here on that table, before
you leave this room!' — and when he protested, I went on,
closing and unclosing my fists, to tell him just exactly what
I would do to him if he refused. He looked this way and
that, at the telephone, and half around at the door, and
knew his situation for precisely what I had made it. He
signed the release and left it with me. . . . And as it is,
it will take me months to pay him, month by month. ' '

A little ill news greeted Jack's return — the best young
shorthorn bull had broken his neck, and hog cholera had
carried off nearly all his blooded hogs.

"I always seem to have to build twice — everything I
undertake," Jack said thoughtfully.

In his workroom again, The Little Lady of the Big
House was begun, in which were exploited his maturing con
cepts on farming and stockbreeding. Many readers take for
granted that the "Big House" was copied from Jack's Wolf
House. As a matter of fact, a picture of Mrs. Phoebe A.
Hearst's home at Pleasanton, California, was roughly the

288 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

model for that of his hero and heroine on an imaginary
ranch in the interior foothills.

Margaret Smith Cobb, a poet of the northern California
forest country, whose verse Jack had been the means of
placing with eastern magazines, sent me the fragmentary
thoughts given below. Jack, to whom I forwarded them,
commented: "The poem is most sweet, most beautiful,
most true. Tell Margaret Cobb the same, for me. I care
not to utter another word on that sad topic."

"Love, let us wander, you and I,

Where but charred embers and pale ashes lie ;

Here where my dreams and fancies took still shape,

In all their glory, laid in wood and stone.

******

Here, blow thy kisses, many, for a stair,

That we may rise where was thy line of rooms

Booms for thyself alone — we had them thus,
Where none might enter but the moon and I.

Dear love, the smoke is yet about my heart,
The crackle of the fire yet sears my brain.
— You will be kind, and dream and care no more,
Nor sorrow for what was my house of dreams. ' '

About this time it was rumored that the Prohibitionists
wanted to nominate Jack London for President. He, when
asked about it, gave his usual breezy consent : * i Sure — I '11
run for anything, if it will help, especially if there's no
chance of my being elected!"

A grapejuice company was formed for the manufacture,
on a large scale, of the incomparable unf ermented drink that
we were already pressing, from wine grapes, for our own
table. Jack was elated over the prospect. It created a new
market for his ranch product, and by the same effort fur
thered the cause of prohibition. He drank regularly of the

11)15. AT WAIKIKI, HONOLULU

1913. ABOARD THE "ROAMER"

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 289

clear, natural juice that bore so little resemblance to the
commercial article that smacks of stewed fruit.

"Government recipe, my dear, government recipe !" he
would gurgle, holding his little glass to the light. "Free
advice to every one — and they wonder how I find out these
things I"

There was crookedness in the grapejuice company,
as there had been in the past year's ventures. Jack, who
had no money in this, only his name, was ultimately sued for
$41,000 ; but the case never came to trial.

With travel in his eye, Jack had been plotting to con
vince an eastern weekly of the value of a series of articles
on all the world, and there was talk of having him begin with
Japan. I was joyous at the prospect of realizing our old
hope to visit those fascinating isles together. But the
Mexican fracas in the spring of 1914 came in between and
the other articles never were undertaken. Hearst had
asked Jack the preceding autumn if he would go to Mexico
in case trouble broke. When the time came, there was
some disagreement upon the price, and Jack went for
Collier's instead. This constituted no infringement of his
fiction contract, so long as he delivered the appointed meas
ure of the fiction.

"And now, " he said, hopefully, "I may be able to redeem
myself as a war correspondent, after what I was held back
from doing by the Japanese Army!''

If he had been able to foretell how slim was the chance of
attaining his wish, he would not have gone. As it was,
Collier's wired to know how long it would take him to make
ready to start for Galveston, Texas, should they telegraph
him to go. ' ' Twenty-four hours, ' ' was the response. Came
the bombardment of the Naval Academy at Vera Cruz,
and on April 16 the summons arrived. We left Glen Ellen
the next morning, and Oakland the same afternoon.

"I'll see you on your way as far as Galveston," ventured

290 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

I, taking for granted that Galveston would be the end of my
journey.

"You can't get ready in time!" Jack said, but with a
bright expectancy that was balm to my apprehension, for I
had not been enthusiastic about his going under fire.

"Oh, can't II" and out came the trunks.

"Well," he paused from his own preparations to glad
den my heart, "if you get that far, maybe we can get you to
Vera Cruz at least — even if you have to stay there when we
go on march to the City of Mexico. ' '

Shortly before leaving, Jack handed me a copy of ' * The
Valley of the Moon," inscribed :

"Dear My- Woman:

"This is our 'Book of Love,' here in our * Valley of the Moon,'
where we have lived and known our love ever since that day you
rode with me to the divide of the Napa hills — Ay, and before that,
before that."

It was at Galveston that Richard Harding Davis in
the second instance rendered Jack London a service. Sev
eral days had passed, the date of departure with General
Frederick Funston was nearing, and all the other corre
spondents who were to accompany him on the transport
Kilpatrick had received their credentials from Washington
and were gaily making ready. Jack's alone seemed to be
withheld, for Edgar Sisson, editor of Collier's, kept wiring
Jack to the effect that he was not to worry — everything
would reach him in time.

On the morning of the transports' sailing-date, I was
shocked from sleep and upon my feet by a burst of martial
music that led a host of men in olive-drab who marched,
with brave, ominous sound, along the sea-wall drive. Jack
joined me at the window and silently we watched the stream
of human life go down to the gulf in ships. Although thrill
ing to the spectacle, Jack could not forget, and quoted from
Le Gallienne's "The Illusion of War":

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 291

" 'War,

I abhor,

And yet how sweet

The sound along the marching street

Of drum and fife, and I forget

Wet eyes of widows, and forget

Broken old mothers, and the whole

Dark butchery without a soul.' "

As the morning wore, and still no word from Washing
ton, we became genuinely concerned. Before others, Jack
preserved a careless demeanor; but when he looked into my
eyes I saw in his the baffled, pained expression that he must
have worn in childhood.

"I can't understand it, I can't understand it," he
puzzled. "Each time Pve called on General Funston, his
aide has courteously put me off. I know the General is not
well, with that abscess in his ear, poor devil ; but that isn 't
the reason. So there seems to be simply nothing I can do. ' '

"I don't care for myself, " he would reiterate. "I
want to make good to Sisson, whose idea it was for me to
go for Collier 's. I don't want to throw him down." Pres
ently, having dictated to me his final letters, and sent off his
Article I to Collier's, he disappeared downstairs, mur
muring :

" 'And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching down the marching street,
For yonder, yonder goes the fife,
And what care I for human life !

And yet 'tis all unbannered lies,

A dream those little drummers make. ' J

An hour passed, and I thought to reconnoitre in the
lobby. Emerging from the elevator, my heart leaped to see
Jack and the General's aide, Lieutenant Ball, each grasping

292 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the other by both hands, and laughing like schoolboys too
pleased for words.

"Why, Mate," Jack explained as we hurried upstairs to
put the last touches to his packing, "it's all up to Richard
Harding Davis. He came to me and said he wondered if I
knew what was going on. You remember that so-called
'Good Soldier' canard that was attributed to me? It has
turned up again. As soon as Davis mentioned it, I could see
the whole trouble in a flash. We looked up Lieutenant Ball,
and — well, you saw us when you came down. Funny how
pleased he was to get the thing cleared up!"

At luncheon, our table was near that of the General. He
and his aide were consulting earnestly ; and after a while the
Lieutenant came toward us. Jack rose, and the two re
turned to the General.

' ' I gave him my word of honor that I did not write a line
of that canard, ' ' Jack reported to me, * ' and upon that word
he takes the responsibility of adding me to his already filled
quota of correspondents. It seems that he had had word
from Washington that my going was left up to him, but he,
personally, was up in arms about the canard."

Next, a telegram came from Secretary Josephus Daniels
that if Jack could not be accommodated on the transport,
he should go on one of the convoying destroyers. "And
that would be an experience new to me, too," Jack exulted.
But a place was shaken down on the Kilpatrick, on which he
sailed Friday afternoon. Any regrets that I may have
felt at my inability to accompany him were tempered by
the fact that I expected to depart twenty-four hours later,
and to meet him on the very date of his arrival in Vera
Cruz. This was made possible by our good friend Mr.
Robert T. Burge, who had proffered me passage on a
vessel of the Gulf Coast Steamship Company, of which he
was President.

"I'm only too glad to present you with a ticket," he
smiled, "but for goodness' sake, don't go. The steamers

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 293

are not suitable for ladies ' travel. . . . But go if you really
must!"

Never shall I forget that evening the little old Atlantis
(wrecked the next voyage) approached Vera Cruz. Across
the mighty slopes of the storied land, Orizaba towered blue
against a sunset sky ; and to the south were raised the tur
rets of the "far-flung battle line" of our own Navy, its
smoke mingling with the low tropic clouds. " War, I abhor,
and yet " that has nothing to do, per se, with just valua
tion of the magnificent machinery invented by brain of
man. One of Jack's Mexican articles, in want of real war
news, was devoted to what he saw at Tampico's oil-fields.
Certain radical contemporaries raged against him, and one,
a noted socialist writer, accused him publicly of having been
subsidized by the oil interests — subsidized ! Jack London !
None but a stupid, or at best a warped creature, it would
seem to those who knew him, could seriously conceive such
a thing.

"Me! subsidized f" Jack stormed, "My worst capital
ist enemies have done me the honor to know better than that.
Why, no human being has ever dared even to hint sub^idi-
zation to me, thank God!"

Here again, friend and enemy were like to convict him
of paradox. Few could comprehend that universality which
made him grasp the whole through all its parts. WTiile de
crying war, he could at the same time appreciate the roman
tic majesty of conquest, hail the bunting of great armadas,
respect the courage and deeds of men who battled according
to their lights. I have seen him almost weep over the ex
ploits of British admirals and fearless midshipmen of old.
"Look!" he would cry, following me with a dusty tome
in his hands, "Listen to this, and this . . . this is the sort
of stuff that went into the making of you, white woman, and
me, and all of us who conquer ourselves and our environ
ment ! " In order to preserve a clear view of Jack, it must
be held in mind that despite the warm human emotionalism

294 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

of him he always came to rest upon his intellectual concep
tions.

Achievement, to him, was achievement, though he
saw all around and under it. "I take off my hat to it," he
would say, whether inspecting the Culebra Cut, or the Har
bor of Pago Pago, or the oil fields of Tampico, or the bene
ficial organization thrown into Vera Cruz by the army
and navy. "If only the whole world could be made so clean
and orderly," he said. "If such cleanliness and order could
emanate, not from the idea of militarism, but as a social
achievement. Let us not wantonly destroy these wonderful
machines, these great world assets, that produce efficiently
and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us profit by their
efficiency and cheapness."

Upton Sinclair, commending upon Jack's detractors,
made no mistake :

"He wrote a series of articles that caused certain radi
cals to turn from him in rage. But I felt certain that the
exponent of capitalist efficiency who counted upon Jack
London's backing was a child playing in a dynamite fac
tory. ... If a naval officer took him over a battleship, he
would perceive that it was a marvelous and thrilling ma
chine ; but let the naval officer not forget that in the quiet
hours of the night Jack London's mind would turn to the
white-faced stokers, to whom as a guest of an officer he had
not been introduced ! ' '

While decrying war, in time of danger Jack said:
"Although I am a man of peace, I carry an automatic
pistol. I might meet somebody who would not listen to my
protestations of friendship and amity. And so with nations
— we 're a long way from universal disarmament. The most
peaceful nation to-day is likely to run up against some other
nation that does riot want peace. It would look as if we shall
need armies for a weary while to come, to enforce the idea
of peace."

He appeared to be surprised at the personnel of the

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 295

army and its officers. I must confess that my own
general idea of the hard-bitten "regular" underwent a
revelation. The rank and file were of a youthful and mostly
blond Anglo-Saxon type. I noticed also that Jack was
pleased to find many of the officers of both army and navy
less "machinely crammed" than he had thought, quite able
to stand on their own feet when it came to up-to-date, inde
pendent thinking. Jack held that the world would have
no more big wars for a long time. "There will be wars,
at one time or another," he believed. "You can't change
man entirely from the primitive, fighting animal he is. But
I do not think we of to-day shall see a big war. The nations
are enlightened enough to stop short of that, and arbitrate
their differences." I borrow this from The Human Drift:

"War is passing. It is safer to be a soldier than a workingman.
The chance for life is greater in an active campaign than in a
factory or a coal mine. In the matter of killing war is growing im
potent, and this in the face of the fact that the machinery of war
was never so expensive in the past nor so dreadful. . . . War has
become a joke. Men have made for themselves monsters of battle
which they cannot face in battle. Not only has war, by its own
evolution, rendered itself futile, but man himself, with greater wis
dom and higher ethics, is opposed to war."

But his uniformed acquaintances, sitting in the portales
of the old Diligencias Hotel, sipping Bacardi rum cocktails,
disagreed :

"Germany will start something before a great while —
see if she doesn't. And she's dying to get her hands on the
United States."

For once, Jack was a poor prophet.

Aside from his old associates of Jap-Russ memories —
E. H. Davis, "Jimmy" Hare, "Bobbie" Dunn, Frederick
Palmer — there were present in Vera Cruz the veteran war
artist, Zogbaum, and Eeuterdhal, who incidentally made a
''Collier" cover from a sketch of Jack; J. B. Connolly, whom

296 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

we had met in Boston; Burge McFall (Associated Press) ;
John T. McCutcheon ; Arthur Ruhl, Vincent Starrett, Stan-
ton Leeds, Oliver Madox Hueffer from London, and Mrs.
Dean, the " Widow " of the New York Town Topics. And
from Mexico City, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Murray, representing
the New York World. There were others, whose names
escape me.

Jack was not the only correspondent who chafed under
the restraint imposed upon the army in Mexico ; nor did the
six weeks in that country strengthen his already weak
regard for the Latin American. When the report came
that Huerta had slipped out of Puerta Mexico to the south,
the whole force was personally in mutinous humor with
sitting inactive. Several of the newspapermen broke parole
and made their precarious way to the capital, where some of
them landed in prison. Jack had declined to go, saying he
did not feel it was fair to General Funston. But later on
he mitigated the control he had put upon himself, and
sailed on the Mexicana for Tampico, the round-trip cover
ing a week. He would not hear of my going to share any
possible nip-and-tuck hazard. Realizing that I would be
in his way, I did not urge, but remained, with Nakata, at
the hotel. Jack charged me, in case orders should come
for the army to march for Mexico City, to buy him a horse,
and have all in readiness for him to go when he should
jump back from Tampico. He also had me wait upon the
good General, to discover if Nakata, being Japanese, might
go along in such event. This the General did not think
advisable; so I kept alert for some other man.

"If there is any advice you need, Mate," Jack adjured
me, "any help at any time, apply to Richard Harding
Davis. " Which clinched what he thought of the "white
man" who had so staunchly declined to see a brother cor
respondent labor under disadvantage. Davis died shortly
before Jack; and six days before Jack's death, I heard him
deliver an impassioned encomium on Davis as a man.

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 297

There being no military action about which to write,
Jack employed himself turning out articles upon general
observations and conditions as he saw them. For recrea
tion, there were horseback rides and drives within the pro
scribed radius ; swims at Los Banos ; dinners and luncheons
aboard the fleet or with the officers of army and navy
ashore ; shopping for laces, Mexican blankets, serapes and
opals; visits to the little provost court where the natives
gaped at a kindly dispensation of justice beyond all their
conception; dancing in patios along the portales of the
hotels; bull fights — General Funston watched these care
fully, and allowed no horses in the ring. Aboard the
Solace, the hospital ship, we found the wounded boys read
ing J. B. Connolly and Jack London, and forgetful of suffer
ing in their pleasure at meeting the authors.

Those broken boys were forerunners of the thousands
from all classes, one in pain and purpose, for whom in the
hospitals of Europe Jack was to fill so many needs. " There,
in hospital/' wrote one, "I read Burning Daylight . . .
then the doctor sent me to Blighty. There I left Burning
Daylight — in the midst of volumes neat and clean and new,
damp-stained and broken-backed, I left it . . ." And from
our friend Major Harry Strange, at the Front: "I always
knew somewhat, and Jack taught me more, and war has
quite convinced me, that the only happiness and joy worth
while is in service, good, big, noble, brave-hearted service.'7
The Tommies called Jack 's books ' ' the Jacklondons ' ' ; and
one of them, a hot-hearted young Celt, wrote me from Dub
lin: "I only know that the man who comprehends as he
did is always right, and that every one else is wrong."
Which voices my own conviction. Again I listen to Jack's
appeal: "Be patient with me in the little things; I am
really patient in the big ones — I have not winced nor cried
aloud." And whereas he might be hasty in little things
and little judgments, upon the big issues of mankind and of

298 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

his own affairs in relation to mankind, he laid a divining
finger that could not touch other than wisely and rightly.

There were visits to San Juan de Ulua, with its spew
of filthy, dehumanized prisoners, whom, with their unthink
able dungeons, our navy cleansed and deodorized. Some of
these unfortunates had no faintest notion as to what, if
any, offense had condemned them to that living burial below
sea level. Others recited haltingly the most trivial of inci
dents that had doomed them to exist for years without
standing-room or light.

"Pretty awful, isn't it?- - But don't forget, Mate,"
Jack, who never forgot anything, would point out, "that we
ourselves aren't half-civilized yet, in our treatment of con
victs. Also, there's such a thing as ' railroad' still existing
in the land of the free ! "

All this time, busy working and playing in Vera Cruz,
waiting while Washington held the army and navy bound
in port, Jack, according to rumor in the capitalist press
of the United States, was leading a band of insurrectos
somewhere in the north of Mexico ! Rumor, did I say? The
large headlines read:

JACK LONDON LEADS ARMY OF MEXICO REBELS.

That some one was making use of his name, however,
seems probable ; for later on we heard of persons who had
met "Jack London" in Mexico and in Lower California.
And an American firm dealing in artist's materials, waited
for years for this or another spurious Jack London in
Mexico to settle his account.

Whether Jack gathered the bacilli in Tampico, or
whether General Maas ' blockade that prevented the ingress
of fresh food to the occupied town of Vera Cruz, combined
with the hotel's filthy kitchen, was responsible, we shall
never know. But on May 30, the day set for him to go up
in an army aeroplane, instead he went to bed in our lately

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 299

bullet-riddled room, with acute bacillary dysentery. Na-
kata and I took charge of the nursing, under the resident
American physician, Dr. A. E. Goodman, in consultation
with Major Williams. The latter wanted him to go into
army hospital, but Jack seemed to prefer a woman nurse,
being myself. Thereafter, every spoonful of water that
passed his lips or was used in nursing, was first thoroughly
boiled in our room by means of electric appliances, "Thanks
to American efficiency, " he groaned from his bed; and his
food we cooked by the same process.

It was a desperate, cautious campaign against death, but
as usual the patient managed by his uncommon recupera
tive powers to make a spectacular recovery. After a few
days he insisted that I take the air with our friends, and
upon my accepting dinner invitations in the portales be
low. "And be sure you don't stint yourself at the lace
shops!" he would call after, with indulgent eyes. Or he
would turn to greet a decayed Spanish gentleman who tip
toed in, who must part with certain ornaments of coral and
ancient gold filigree :

"Do you like it, Mate?" he would finger a bracelet or
rosary. "If you do, say the word. A woman must have
some loot of war, even if her husband has to buy it!"

Nine days after he was stricken, and with pleurisy to
boot, he was able to go aboard the cattle transport Ossabaw,
bound for Galveston. "If anything breaks in Vera Cruz,
which I don 't think likely, I can return, ' ' he said. i ' Mean
time, me for the Ranch, where I can have white-man's cli
mate and grub!"

"Do you know what are in the long boxes where those
soldiers are sitting to play cards?" Jack pointed down to
the main deck. And before I could gasp a reply, he finished :

"Those fellows were dead in four days of what I pulled
through."

About this time occurred the riots in the hopfields at
Wheatland, California, resulting from shocking conditions

300 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

and treatment, and for once the high-handed methods of
certain detectives had roused the ire of the public. Jack's
opinion concerning this u death hole" was sought — indeed,
looking over his clipping-books, I notice how frequently he
was asked for his opinion upon widely variant subjects. I
quote :

"The sheriff fired a shot in the air, and then, presto! it all
happened at once. As a matter of fact, nobody knows what hap
pened. I am willing to bet that if every one of these witnesses
went before God Almighty and told, to the best of his recollection,
no two would agree. It was the well-known crowd psychology on
the job.

"These men were not organized. There was only one amongst
the 2300 of them who held an I. W. W. card. They did not need
organization. They had seen the cost of living soar and soar, their
purchasing power grow less and less ; they had all felt within them
selves, 'Something must be done.' Above all, they have had force
preached into them, pounded into them, from the beginning — by
whom? The employers.

"The employers have always ruled the working class with
force. One incident happened that is strangely typical. One of
the Durst Brothers struck one of the leading workmen in the face.
He said he did it 'facetiously.' Maybe he did; it isn't likely.
But, facetious or not, that blow symbolized the whole relation be
tween employer and employee. Where they do not actually strike
blows, it is because they fear the blows will be struck back.

"Now, Sheriff Voss and District Attorney Manwell came on
the scene not at all in the interest of equity, but in the interest of
the employer. They were not there to see fair play; they were
there to 'keep order/ The sheriff expected his shot in the air to
cow them.

"Why didn't they cow? Simply because they are becoming
more and more imbued with the belief that force is the only way.
I look back over history and see that never has the ruling class
relinquished a single one of its privileges except it was forced to.

"It is always the things we fight for, bleed for, that we care
most for. This lesson of force is soaking into the workers — that's
all."

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 301

Another question upon which Jack's views were solicited
was as follows : A grown man in the State of Illinois took
advantage of a young girl, and was sentenced to thirty
years in the penitentiary. A child being born, the young
mother started a movement to free its father so that he
might marry her for the sake of the child. Jack's answer to
the Newspaper Enterprise Association is below:

"The world and civilization belong to the races that practice
monogamy. Monogamy is set squarely against promiscuity.
Wherefore monogamy, as the cornerstone of the state, demands a
legal father for Vallie. Also the father and the mother of Vallie de
sire to make their parenthood legal. Therefore the only logical
thing for the state of Illinois to do is to make possible this legaliza
tion of Vallie 's birth and parentage. Otherwise the State of Illin
ois stultifies itself by kicking out the cornerstone of civilization on
which it is found, namely, the family group that can exist only
under monogamy."

No one could be more shaken than Jack, in July, by the
beginning of war in Europe. And while he went on unre
mittingly with writing and ranch, the war was the under
current of every thought. More staunchly than ever before
he reiterated his faith in England. "England is fighting
her first popular war," he would say; and he could not for
give Germany, over and above her sworn Frightfulness, for
having been stupid enough to think that England would
not fight.

But to any proposition bearing upon his presence in
France as correspondent, he practically turned a deaf ear,
in 1914 and thenceforward until he died.

"Again I say, the Japanese settled the war correspond
ent forever, by proving him non-essential. Look at Davis
and the rest, some of the best in the world, " he would indi
cate as the conflict widened. ' ' Eating out their hearts over
there. Not for me. If I went, I would be unable to get
what I went after. I have learned my lesson. If I ever do

302 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

go to this war, it will be to fight with England and her
Allies. . . . Meantime, I have a lot of mouths to feed, and
irons in the fire, and I could not leave with my affairs in
their present shape. "

Yet I knew that had there been the ghost of an opening
for him to see what he wished, he would have managed to go.

He and Collier's corresponded upon the possibility, to
find, in the end, that they agreed upon the matter. They
wrote him:

" We learned . . . that of the twelve English correspon
dents chosen to join Sir John French's army not one has as
yet been allowed the privilege, and the prospect seems that
the thing has been indefinitely postponed. . . . The pre-
cariousness of the whole business of war correspondents
at the present time seems to make it rather futile to put
first-class men in the field, BO to speak, and break their
hearts by making it impossible for them to get anywhere of
real importance. . . . We sent you a clipping some days ago
which shows that finally all belligerents have decided to do
away with correspondents. The result is that we can only
get certain casual articles from roving writers of one sort
or another with very little or real stuff from the front. ' '

Exasperated with the way he felt the Mexican crisis had
been mishandled at Washington, Jack grew more so with
the failure of his own country, as time went on, to take a
hand in the European crisis. The effect of all this was to
stimulate his brain to more thinking, while at the same time
he increased his work and plans for work in every direc
tion.

When in June he gave me "The Strength of the Strong/'
the fly leaf reminded me of that in a book he had sent me the
month before our marriage, in which was written : "The red
gods call to us. We fling ourselves across the world to
meet again and not to part. ' ' And here, nine years later,
I found:

NEW YORK; MEXICO; ROAMER 303

"Back again from Vera Cruz, and all the world, you back with
me from the war game, I am almost driven to assert that our little
war game adventure was as sweet and fine as our first honeymoon. ' '

In the Indian summer we rejoined the Roamer at San
Eafael and spent months upon the big bay. The Exposition
was rising from the water's edge and many the late after
noon we pulled up our fishing-lines where we lay off Angel
Island, and sailed to where we could watch that dream city
of domes and minarets in the flood of sunset rose and gold.

On December 8, Jack signed and dated the manuscript of
"The Little Lady of the Big House/' and began working up
notes for the Grove Play, which the Bohemian Club had
asked him to prepare for the 1916 High Jinks.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

ROAMER; RETURN TO HAWAII; GLEN ELLEN FORTIETH YEAR

1915

WANT to hear some of your husband's verse ?" he
queried with mock gravity, inking a period to his
first morning 's work upon "The Acorn Planter. " "Come
below, and listen how it runs along !"

He had much sport writing this thin little volume. But
let no one mistake that he was not in dead earnest with
regard to its motif. Far from attempting formal versifi
cation, he but fixed more noticeably the runic tendency in
earlier work which had dealt with the Younger World.
When it was done and read aloud, he passed me the last
slender sheaf to copy, sighing:

"I don't know what to think of it — and yet, I don't
believe it is so bad ! Good or bad, however, it is done ; so
send it along to the Secretary of the Bohemian Club.

One thing about it, though: I'll bet the composers in

the Club are going to have merry hell putting music to it.
They've done Indian stuff before now; but this goes too far
back into the raw beginnings of the race, I fear. . . . Ready
to cast off, Nakata?" And Jack sprang to the Roamer's
wheel, and in fine disdain of wind and wave forgot "The
Acorn Planter," and all its works.

It was for the very reason feared by Jack that the Grove
Play was finally written by some one else. "The Acorn
Planter" has never been enacted, but appeared in book-
form in 1916. "And somehow, I like the little thing," he
would say, passing his hand over it.

304

EETUBN TO HAWAII; FOETIETH YEAR 305

"And now," lie announced at nine the morning after it
was finished, J ' now for a dog-story. I just seem to have to
write one every so often."

This was " Jerry," which was followed by a companion
book, "Michael," as "The Call of the Wild" had preceded
"White Fang." When, Jack gone beyond consulting, I
was confronted with the dilemma of issuing "Jerry" simul
taneously with a book of the same name from another house,
I hit upon "Jerry of the Islands," with "Michael Brother
of Jerry" to balance the sequel. Jack had planned, after
bringing out both volumes, eventually to combine them
under the title of "Jerry and Michael." I remember how
he reveled in creating the Ancient Mariner.

1 1 Michael, ' ' beneath its delightful romance and character
portraiture, is frank propaganda for the stamping out of
stage-training for animals. To this end, Jack had for years
been quietly collecting data from every available source.
No reader who would understand his motive should pass by
the Preface of "Michael, Brother of Jerry," which states
his views. Out of this book has grown a rapidly expand
ing, international organization known as The Jack London
Club. There are no dues.

"Jerry" and "Michael" appeared duly in The Cosmo
politan Magazine, and the books were published in 1917
and 1918 respectively. "Jerry" was partly written in
Hawaii.

Young friends in Stockton persuaded us to leave
the yacht at anchor and join a week-end jaunt to Truckee,
for the winter sports. There in the High Sierras we tobog-
anned and went on sleighing parties. A visit to the lake
where the ill-starred Donner Party had made its last stand
against odds, affected Jack — that frontier tragedy, with
others of the brave old days, having always stirred his
imagination. The skiirg, while he watched it by the hour,
and ice-skating, Jack would not attempt with his ' * smashed ' '
ankles, which had been cramping at night. "Getting old,

306 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

getting old," he would grit through his teeth while I manip
ulated the small feet. 1 1 Do you realize that your husband is
in his fortieth year?"

Then he met "Scotty," otherwise Mr. J. H. Scott, cham
pion dog-musher, with his prize teams of Malemutes and
Siberian huskies, gee-pole sleds and all. Jack's pleasure
knew no bounds — because, forsooth, beyond all personal joy
in renewing acquaintance with the trappings of a wonder
ful phase in his youth, he could now show me the old way
of the Northland. " Scotty" appreciated the situation, and
we must drive with him. Two sleds swung up to the curb,
one driven by Mr. Brady, and we took the novel airing for
glistening miles to a neighboring mountain town — Jack
behind the eight Malemutes, I drawn by the dozen lighter
dogs, little chow-like things of fluff and steel, with plumy
curled tails and the brightest, merriest eyes and manners
in the world, ready to stampede the outfit any moment a
rabbit hove above the white horizon.

"Gee! I wish it were possible to film 'The Call of the
Wild,' Jack considered. "What good materials right here!
But I don 't see how it could be done — a dog hero would be
necessary."

* ' How about your stage-training for animals ? " I hinted.
But he thought the "cruelty" would be negligible in pre
paring a dog, whose part at best could be but subsidiary.

"Bemember," he worked it out, "a long time, in
one place, with no harsh traveling conditions, would be
taken to get the dog in shape. A few performances, at
most, would do the trick, which is very different from the
vaudeville circuit, my dear, where the animal is obliged,
fair weather and foul, to go through the same act, often of
most unnatural character, from two to four times a day,
year in and year out."

Eight here is a good place to make clear Jack London's
position with regard to a much-mooted issue, that of vivi
section. He subscribed to the use, not the abuse of vivi-

EETUEN TO HAWAII; FOETIETH YEAR 307

section, approaching this subject, as all others, through the
scientific avenue.

"No, I'll admit, I'd run a thousand miles rather than
see a pet dog of mine cut up. But if it were a choice between
having my dog or any dog experimented upon, and my
child or any child, I'd say the dog every time."

Thus, he had little time to waste in argument with men
and women who made claim that no benefit had been derived
from vivisection, no human life saved by the conclusions
therefrom. He considered that he knew better, what of
the time he spent with the books.

"There will always be fanatics, and there will always
be abuse, in any field of research," he would declare. "But
the legitimate practice of vivisection should not be inter
fered with. It should be subject to inspection and control
—but not by ignorant and prejudiced sentimentalists, who
won't listen to the good features of a proposition, and who
exaggerate the regretable."

There was something inimical working in Jack's blood
those days. No sooner were we back on the Eanch, than the
sporadic cramps were succeeded by an attack of rheumatism
in one foot.

"And gaze out of that window, at the weather," he
grieved, pointing from his bed to the streaming landscape.
"Last winter there wasn't enough rain. This year we're
swamped! God doesn't love the farmer! But the drain-
tile is carrying off a lot of the overflow — things are work
ing, things are working!" he cheered up.

Severe pyorrhea of long standing contributed its quota
of poison; and, in his acid condition, his yachting fare of
twelve-minute-roasted canvasback and mallard, and red-
meated raw fish, was hazardous menu. He experimented
with emetine, and had the village doctor make tri-weekly
calls at the Eanch to give him intramuscular hypodermic
injections. Jack's mouth altered considerably in latter
years, from loss of all upper teeth and wearing a plate

308 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

The upper lip, once full and narrowing to the deep corners,
grew thinner and more straight of line. It was no less
beautiful — merely different from the more youthful fea
ture. Jack's face, at whatever age, breaking into smile
of lips and eyes, was one that, once seen, was never for
gotten. It is undying. It will persist as long as the life of
any one who beheld it.

Before sailing for Honolulu on February 24, we made
several trips to that loveliest of evanescent cities, the Pan-
Pacific Exposition. Jack cared little, as a rule, for that
sort of spectacle and amusement. But the sunset metropolis
enfolded him in its golden embrace, charmed him into hours
of unwonted idleness, through afternoon and blue twi
light, listening to the fountains and watching the Tower of
Jewels blossom against the starlit skies. One day I par
ticularly recall, when we had arrived early and stepped
into the human, holiday atmosphere that pervaded the vast
inclosure.

1 i I never drove a car in my life, ' ' Jack threatened. * * It 's
time I began. Woman, climb in!" What I was so sum
marily invited to climb into was one of the handy electric-
driven wheel-chairs that rest many tired limbs. How we
laughed; and how the morning strollers laughed with the
enthusiastic, noisy boy with the cap and curls, who coaxed
the feeble mechanism into doing his will, and when it would
not respond, talked to it eloquently before dismounting
and lifting it around. It was Jack London, any of you
who joined in gayety with the exuberant boy that crisp
California morning. Once, stalled momentarily in a ge
ranium nursery behind the giant arbor that was the
Horticultural Building, he stopped to admire the floral
flames. He did not live to learn that one of them, a large
crimson single variety, had been named for himself.

Going to Hawaii had been farthest from our thoughts
that winter of 1915, and our decision was a result of the
merest turn of events. Jack, beneath almost more than he

RETURN TO HAWAII; FORTIETH YEAR 309

could stagger, even with his large earnings, intended to
stay close at home and work out his financial salvation
under double pressure of work. The Cosmopolitan had
offered release from his fiction contract long enough for
him to accompany the Atlantic Fleet, carrying the Presi
dent, on its jaunt through the Panama Canal to the Exposi
tion. Jack's personal desire, or lack of desire to leave
home, is expressed in his telegraphic reply :

"Glen Ellen, December 18, 1914.

"Don't want to go anywhere. Don't want to do anything ex
cept stay in California and write two dandy novels, the first of
which I am now framing up. However, since I like to be as good
to my friends as I like my friends to be good to me, I am willing to
fall for the Panama adventure if it does not compel me to lose
too much financially.

* ' European war has hit me hard financially, wherefore in view
of fact that Panama trip is short enough not to prevent my deliver
ing next year's serials on time, the primary stipulation is that
regular check comes to Ranch every month, including the month
in which I do Panama. Wire me full business details, dates, and
amount of stuff I am expected to write. Should like several days
in New York before sailing."

It was not for me to sail on the battleship, and while I
accepted my feminine fate, I declined again to remain
in California during an absence of Jack. "I shall go to
Honolulu and join Beth," referring to my cousin, Beth
Wiley, who was wintering here. "I can be in San Fran
cisco for your return. "

Jack, though outwardly falling in with my plan, I think
was rather taken aback at the idea of his small woman
going her own way, alone. It was amusing to note his
restlessness. Not once but many times he would boil over.

"I don't want to go on that damned Panama trip — I
want to go to Hawaii with you, and work on * Jerry7 and
1 Michael!' "

310 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Or: " Somehow, I can't be content not to see the Islands
again, with you."

The exigencies of the European conflict having made it
necessary to call off the Fleet's Exposition voyage, Jack's
voice rang with the good news :

"Look what I've got! And now, Mate Woman, I can
go to Hawaii with you!"

But when, standing on the deck of the Matsonia, we
waved farewell to our friends, he confessed :

"Do you know the true reason I am aboard this ship
to-day? Because I could not bear to disappoint you — and
incidentally myself. I ought not to go away, with all those
important things needing my attention. But I just couldn't
risk the sight of your face when I should tell you that you'd
have to go alone after all!"

"But I wouldn't," said I, with a great relief that our
feet were on the outward-bound planking. "I should have
staid home, of course, where I belonged — and beside," I put
in slyly, "if you had let business keep you home, it would be
the first time! You've always been able to manage things
from a distance, and the mails and cable facilities are still
working. ' '

"You're right," he acknowledged.

This and our next visit, as before written, are detailed
in my book "Our Hawaii." In the 1921 edition, I have
included three articles written by Jack in 1916, entitled "My
Hawaiian Aloha," which one of the Territory's leading men
pronounced "worth millions to the Islands."

We took our own servants and set up housekeeping, in
the first instance on Beach Walk, whence we came and went
on inter-island travels in the group. Our daily life in the
pretty cottage included the same working habits as at
home ; and afternoons were spent on the beach. Each day,
after luncheon, saw Jack, often robed in a blue kimono of
bold design, carrying a long bag of similar fabric contain
ing reading matter and cigarettes, with a bath-towel wound

EETUEN TO HAWAII; FORTIETH YEAR 311

turban-wise around his head, soft-footing Kalia Road
bound for the Outrigger Club. They were happy hours,
lying on the shady sand among the barbaric black-and-
yellow canoes, reading aloud, napping, and chatting with
our friends. Later in the day we swam through and beyond
the breakers and spent some of the most wonderful moments
of our united lives floating in the deeper water where, in
the swaying, caressing element, undisturbed betwixt sky
and earth, all things lost their complicated aspect, and we
talked simply and solemnly of the issues that count most in
human relationship.

When "The Scarlet Plague," written just before the
baby was born, had been received, in it he wrote :

"My Mate- Woman:

"And here, in blessed Hawaii, eight years after our voyage
here in our own speck boat, we find ourselves, not merely again,
but more bound to each other than then or than ever. ' '

In March he wrote a Preface for "The Cry for Justice, "
by Upton Sinclair.

The following letter, written on June 3, is interesting:

"Dear Cloudesley:

"In reply to yours of May 15. First of all, whatever you do,
read Conrad's latest — VICTORY. Read it, if you have to pawn
your watch to buy it. Conrad has exceeded himself. He must have
deliberately set himself the challenge, and it is victory for him,
because he has skinned "Ebb Tide."

"He has made a woman out of nothing — out of sweepings of
life, and he has made her woman glorious. He has painted love
with all love's illusion — himself, Conrad, devoid of illusion.

4 ' Lena goes without saying. She is Woman. But it is
possible, absolutely possible, for the several such men as Mr. Jones,
Ricardo, Pedro, Heyst, Schomberg, Morrison, Davidson, and Wang
and his Alfuro woman, to exist. I know them all. I have met
them all. I swear it.

312 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"As regards the love of this book, the sex of this book — all the
love and the sex of it is correct, cursedly correct, splendidly,
magnificently correct, with every curse of it and every splendid
magnificence of it duly placed, shaded and balanced. Yes, and
the very love of Ricardo is tremendous and correct.

"In brief, I am glad that I am alive, if, for no other reason,
because of the joy of reading this book.

"Jack London."

The next day, still filled with his emotion, he could not
restrain himself from passing it on to the author of
"Victory":

"Honolulu, T. H., June 4, 1915.
' * Dear Joseph Conrad :

' ' The mynah birds are waking the hot dawn about me. The surf
is thundering in my ears where it falls on the white sand of the
beach, here at Waikiki, where the green grass at the roots of the
cocoanut palms insists to the lip of the wave-wash. This night has
been yours — and mine.

"I had just begun to write when I read your first early work.
I have merely madly appreciated you and communicated my appre
ciation to my friends through all these years. I never wrote you.
I never dreamed to write you. But * Victory' has swept me off my
feet, and I am inclosing herewith a carbon copy of a letter written
to a friend at the end of this lost night's sleep. [The letter to
Cloudesley.]

"Perhaps you will appreciate this lost night's sleep when I tell
you that it was immediately preceded by a day's sail in a Japanese
sampan of sixty miles from the Leper Settlement of Molokai
(where Mrs. London and I had been revisiting old friends) to
Honolulu.

"On your head be it.

"Aloha (which is a sweet word of greeting, the Hawaiian
greeting, meaning 'My love be with you.")

"Jack London."

Never, before or since, have I taken such hazards with
the water as during those months at Waikiki, under Jack's

RETURN TO HAWAII; FORTIETH YEAR 313

tutelage. Always relying upon that sixth sense of his in
matters of life and death, I followed his lead wherever he
thought by direction I could go, and accomplished what I
would not have deemed possible for myself. But he never
led me where he feared I could not safely swim. And when
once or twice we had surmounted conditions that kept
shorebound the canoes and even surfriders, and returned
unexhausted, his joy and pride in his "one small woman "
were unlimited.

"You're so little, so frail, white woman of my own
kind," he would marvel, his great eyes looking into me
as if to discern the fiber of which I was made. 'Look at that
arm, with its delicate bones — I could snap it like a clay pipe-
stem . . . and yet, those arms never faltered in that succes
sion of smoking combers to-day . . ." He tapped his fore
head: "That's where it resides — that's what makes the
trivial flesh and bone able to do what it does!"

Deep thinker though he was, and worshipful of the brain-
stuff of others, he ever found shining things of the spirit in
courageous physical endeavor. I think, in a dozen close
years with him, year in and year out, "in sickness and in
health," till death did us part, that never have I seen him
more elated, more uplifted with delight over feat of one
dear to him, than upon one April day at Waikiki.

An out-and-out Kona gale had piled up a big, quick-
following surf, threshing milk-white and ominous under a
leaden, low-hanging sky. At the Outrigger beach no soul
was visible ; but a group of young sea-gods belonging to the
Club sat with bare feet outstretched on the railing of the
lanai above the canoes. Joining them, Jack inquired if they
were "going out." "Nothing doing," one laughed. And
another, "This is no day for surf -boards — and a canoe
couldn't live in that mess!" "But we are going to swim
out," Jack said. "You'd better not, Mr. London," the
boys frowned respectfully. "You couldn't take a woman

314 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

into that water. " "You watch me," Jack returned. "I
could, and shall."

We went. Now, understand : it was not to be spectacu
lar that Jack led me into the sea that day. This was not
bravado. With the several weeks' training he had given
me in sizable breakers, he expected as a matter of course
to see me put that training to account. And I felt as one
with him. The thing was, first, to get beyond the diving-
stage, for a freshet had brought down the little river a
tangle of thorned algaroba and other prickly vegetation,
which, with a wild wrack of seaweed, made the shallow
almost impassable.

Very slowly we forged outward, and at length were in
position where the marching seas were forming and over-
toppling. Eather stupendous they loomed, I will confess;
but, remembering other and smaller ones and obeying scru
pulously Jack's quiet "Don't get straight up and down
— straighten out — keep flat, keep flat!" I managed not
badly to breast and pass through a dozen or more smoking
combers that followed fast and faster.

When I finally ventured, "I think I have had
enough," immediately Jack slanted our course channel-
ward where the tide flows out toward the reef egress. But
after half an hour we found we were, despite all effort,
drifting willy nilly out to sea. By now, the young sea-gods
had followed with their boards, fearing we might come to
grief; and upon their advice we rejoined the breaking water,
and "came in strong" with our best strokes to the Beach.

Which I tell, further to point his passion for physical
courage and prowess that after all are but mental. "I'd
like you to write books, if you wanted to," was his final
word; "but I'd rather see woman of mine win through
those great seas out there than write great books!"

Jack's health was fairly good that summer, though he
seemed to be on tension, and prone to argue overlong and
over-intensely. Indeed, as time went on, he battled with

EETUEN TO HAWAII; FOETIETH YEAE 315

this and that opponent, or provoked skirmishes, with an
increasing fervor and violence that ill-betokened a peace
ful old age. ' ' Oh, well, I Jd rather wear out than rust out ! ' '
was his verdict on the matter.

And once Jack told me a thing that will abide like a
dove of peace until I die, as one of my sweetest touches with
this sweetest of men :

"I never said this to you," he began; "but many years
ago, before I knew you existed, I lay one afternoon on a
California beach — at Santa Cruz — in one of my great dis
gusts . . . you know — when I have dared look Truth in
the face and become blackly pessimistic about the world
and the men and women in it who cannot learn, who cannot
use their puny minds. It was a warm, still day ; and while
I lay, with my face on my arms, over and above the steady
breathing of the ocean and splashing of a small surf, there
came to me, from very far off, almost like skylarks in the
blue, the voices of a man and a woman.

"I couldn't for the life of me figure where the voices
came from. I raised my head, but no one was in sight on
the beach ; and at last, the nearing conversation guided me
seaward where I could just barely make out the heads of
two persons very leisurely coming in, talking cozily out
there in deep water, as unconcerned and comfortable as if
sitting in the sand.

" Something inside me suddenly yearned toward them
— they were so blest, those two together. And I wondered,
lying there sadly enough, if there was a woman in the world
for me who so loved the water — the little woman who would
be the right woman who would speak my own language —
with whom I could go out to sea,, without boat or life-
preserver ; hours in the water holding long comradely talks
on everything under the sun, with no more awareness of the

means of locomotion than if walking. 1 could have told

you this eight years ago," he mused, "that wonderful morn
ing we swam together across Urufaru Bay in Moorea,

316 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

while the Tahitians worried about the sharks. ... I
thought of it at the time. But we were not alone. The stage
was not set for you and me."

I could see that the shame of civilization, the Great
War, worked havoc in him. That any white nation, hunt
ing for a place in the sun, should have made such a thing
possible, was never out of his consciousness ; and he raved
in his choicest vocabulary concerning Germania. Still, he
did not think the war would last long. We were on Hawaii,
the "Big Island," with the 1915 Congressional junketing
party from Washington, on which Jack had been made one
of the entertainment committee, when the stunning intelli
gence came of the sinking of the Lusitania. Jack, for once,
was shocked into something akin to silence. To his mind,
the best characterization of that crime was the one made
by I have forgotten whom: " When Germany, with paean of
joy, committed suicide !"

To certain harsh comments upon a young English friend
who, answering Great Britain 's call, left his mother and his
children in Honolulu, Jack pleaded with blazing eyes :

"You do not seem to understand: he had to go. There
was no other way out, for him, than the one he chose ; he
could not have done other than he did ... as well criticize
the flame that burns, as criticize this royal thing of the
spirit within him that drew him from success, and love of
children, and fat security, half-way across the world to fling
himself into the maelstrom of battle, pain and death — all
for an Idea. ' '

In the latter part of July, we bade good bye to Hono
lulu. Jack said: "We must go back soon. I feel as if
our visit had been interrupted. " For he had made many
friends, conquered a few outstanding prejudices, and felt
much at home in this neighboring "fleet of Islands" above
the Line.

We landed into the annoyance of trouble with the
grapejuice company, but it seemed as if difficulties of this

EETUEN TO HAWAII; FORTIETH YEAR 317

sort were all in the day's work. "What am I to think? I
go into the cleanest sort of business, to make the best non
alcoholic drink known, and I get it in the neck, pronto — just
like that! "

1 ' But the lake 's full of water for my alfalfa, ' ' he checked
himself, "and that means more life, more abundance of
butter-fat from your little Jerseys, bigger Shire colts,
heavier beef cattle, and the rest ! ' '

To our mutual rejoicing, the water was warm enough
for swimming, and Jack asked his sister to shift a gang
from some other section of the ranch, "run up" a log bath
house of six rooms and lead the necessary piping for two
showers. Inside of three days this convenience was a
reality, as well as an appropriate accent in the scenery of
the meadow. A rustic table and seats, set within a circle of
redwoods, two canvas boats forgotten out of the Snarls' s
dunnage, together with a diving float, perfected our equip
ment for al fresco entertaining.

Jack stocked the lakelet with catfish brought from the
San Joaquin river, and these proved a great advantage,
both for sport and table.

A trap-shooting outfit was purchased, but he never got
around to having it installed. "I can't find a place that
seems exactly right," he complained; "nor a good spot for
a tennis court. As for golf links — " he put it up to Joe
Mather, l ' if you '11 make suggestions where they can be laid
out, I'll go ahead and have the work done."

There had been correspondence with Mr. Edgar Sisson,
then editor of The Cosmopolitan, as to writing a "movie"
novel based upon a scenario by Charles Goddard, author of
"The Perils of Pauline" and other "thrillers" of the
screen. Chapters of the novel were to appear in the string
of Hearst newspapers, and simultaneously illustrated in
the cinema theatres. Jack was not enthusiastic at first,
but saw a possible way to recoup his pocketbook from his

318 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

tremendous outlay on the ranch. His suggestion being
agreed upon for a lump sum running into five large figures
with temporary release from his regular measure of fiction,
he launched into it with glee:

" Think — it'll be sheer recreation, though I double my
usual daily portion, at double my usual rate ! And I don 't
have to do a thing but reel off the stuff, upon Goddard 's
scenario notes. I don't have to worry about plot, or
sequence of events, or contribute a single idea if I don't
want to ! "

He never ceased to maintain that he hated to write — had
to drive himself to it. It made him flare when this was ques
tioned. In reply to an unknown admirer, he wrote: ", . .
Let me tell you that I envy you. You delight to write.
You delight in your writing. You are enamored of writing,
while I, with the publication of my first book, lost all joy
in writing. I go each day to my daily task as a slave would
go to his task. I detest writing. On the other hand it is
the best way I have ever found to make a very good
living. So I continue to write. But his best work was con
ceived in passion for its own sake, and I think one feels
his urge of self-expression, while many were his enthu
siasms over what he was doing. One short piece of work
gave him a great deal of pleasure — a Preface for a new
edition of Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." Be
cause of absence from California, his manuscript did not
reach Macmillans in season, pnd it was a keen disappoint
ment to Jack that the book was published without his appre
ciation. So the most he could do was to include it in a book-
collection, and it appears, under the title of "A Classic of
the Sea," in "The Human Drift."

Mr. Sisson and Mr. Goddard paid us a visit to discuss
ways and means, because Jack avowed his determination of
taking this work to Hawaii, where Mr. Goddard would have
to send his installments of scenario for the novelist's guid
ance. When in the spring of 1916, at Waikiki, he completed

RETURN TO HAWAII; FORTIETH YEAR 319

this manuscript of what has been called "frenzied fiction"
he wrote a Foreword explaining at length how he had come
to lend himself to such a bizarre undertaking. "In truth,"
he says, "this yarn is a celebration. By its completion I
celebrate my fortieth birthday, my fiftieth book, my six
teenth year in the writing game, and a new departure. I
have certainly never done anything like it before; I am
pretty certain never to do anything like it again. ' ' And he
then goes deeper into his subject.

"Hearts of Three," they named it; and, as a sympa
thetic critic has suggested, it should be viewed as something
of a joke — the most adventurous, high-spirited, rollicking,
ridiculous, impossible stuff in the world, an outrageous
thing of delightful absurdity. In this light Jack regarded
it, and had the time of his life in its fabrication. He re
ceived his money, but died before the story was published
in the newspapers; and for some reason it has not, up to
1921, been presented upon the screen.

Our loss of Nakata, to marriage and career, at the end
of 1915, constituted more than a domestic flurry. He had
nearly every prerequisite of the close and confidential ser
vitor, and it is hard to decide which suffered more from his
absence, Jack or myself. All in all, I think it was Jack.
Next, our guests missed his cheery and charming service,
for "Where is Nakata?" ordinarily followed greetings from
our friends.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE WAR; HAW AH

1916

AND now I come to the last and most difficult movement
in my undertaking. The mere narrative is nothing
— that in March, with our Japanese, we sailed on the Great
Northern for Honolulu, rented a spreading old bungalow at
2201 Kalia Eoad, Waikiki, and lived the gay life of the sub-
tropic city, breaking the round with wonderful inter-island
explorations, and returning to California after seven
months.

What is so difficult is the developing of this last earthly
phase of Jack London, so that all who run may read and
not wonder overmuch why, through sheer neglect, he cut
himself off, or caused himself to be cut off from the larger
fulfilment of himself. For I truly believe that his best work
was yet to come. That he believed it, I am equally con
vinced. "Just wait, wait until I've got everything going
ahead smoothly, and don't have to consider the where
withal any more, and then I am going to write some real
books !"

Jack's life is the story of a princely ego that struggled
for full expression, and realized it only in a small degree.
There were so few to heed his deeper self-manifestations.
As a mere lad, he was conscious of that superiority and of
its environmental discrepancy, and all the while fought for
the congenial environment. As he grew in mental stature,
he recognized himself as part of the whole ego-substance,
and proceeded to fight for the proper environment for egos

320

THE WAR; HAWAII 321

other than his own. Hence, Jack the Individualist, and
Jack the Socialist.

The result of his individual struggle for expression,
when young, was Success, Recognition. Yet, as I have
already written, such was the universal quality of his mind
that he would have reached success, as the world regards
it, by way of any medium of expression he had selected
under ceaseless urge of that princely ego. Perhaps, as the
years lapsed, if the world had demanded more, he might
have been forced into an expression somewhere nearly ade
quate to his inner demand. But the world acclaimed what
he did do, and the money that same world paid enabled him
to search for happiness — a goal in itself. Yet happiness,
as he saw it, was endeavor, always endeavor, the accumula
tion of knowledge, and to no small end. He created an
environment which bade fair to balance in extent his royal
requirement — the wide-reaching acres with their herds of
the best, the lavish Ihospitality, the gre/at house. (Yet
throughout he preserved the collective ideal, gave to others
the unselfish help of his brain and time and money, impelled
by an incorruptible ideal of making the world a better place
for his having lived in it — of "causing two blades of grass
to grow where one grew before."

But with all this in his grasp, the instinct to search still
drove him on. He was doomed to remain unsatisfied, and
unsatisfied he remained. The ultimate aim could not be
fame, nor money, nor anything the world had in its gift. I
had almost said that Love itself left him empty ; but insofar
as he loved Love, and could not live without Love and what
understanding and ease of spirit Love could vouchsafe in
his unguarded moments of despair, Love, I say, given and
returned, kept him alive for many a year. This I know.

He had tried during his life all the ways known to man
for getting away from an insatiable ego. And all he had
really succeeded in was to obscure the demands that he had
by his white logic interpreted, and had striven so hard to

322 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

placate. It may be he sensed this long before he came
face to face with and acknowledged it; and this probably
led him more or less consciously to greater emphasis upon
all the things with which he drugged his perception of
futility — his work, his amusements, and the dream of scien
tific husbandry into which his unquenchable pioneering
spirit had led him. And when, once in a while, he brought
up and staggered before a flash of insight to the way he
was bound, he called upon all the artifices of a superb
intellect to prove he was right in defying the vision. It
was a regal battle, and he lost — at least, so far as concerns
the perceptions of most of us who are left. No man with
his capacity could ever really bury the melancholy heritage
that is coincident with the brain that seeks and scans too
closely the fearful face of Truth. ' * My mistake in opening
the books, " he would repeat. " Sometimes I wish I had
never opened the books. " Still, except as he was warped
by sickness, at any time he was glad to quote, " 'E liked
it all." The game was worth the candle.

The conflict shows in the caliber of literature that first
earned him renown, and the caliber of that which served
his chosen end, preaching the things which filled his brain
and hands with work that waided off the final capitulation
he made to his fate. The first is distinguished by the im
personal note ; the second marked equally by the personal.
Had the human clay of him been equal to his mental
capacity and urge, he might in time have stood out grand
and free and his gift to the ages been of unequaled value.
As note :

For months Jack had been reading, in his intensive
method, in conjunction with the works of all the best alien
ists, upon the subject of Psychoanalysis — Freud, Prince,
and, most of all, Jung. Much he read aloud, calling me to
him, or following me about to instil certain passages. But
it was one utterance, in that summer of 1916, that made me
realize, distinct from the excitement that the conquest of

THE WAR; HAWAII 323

Knowledge always produced in him, that he had at last come
upon something commensurate with his highest powers of
penetration. His eyes like stars, his face still with a high
solemnity I had never before seen upon it, in a voice so
prophetic that my soul has been listening ever since, he
said:

' ' Mate Woman, I tell you I am standing on the edge of a
world so new, so terrible, so wonderful, that I am almost
afraid to look over into it."

As I came to look with him over that brink into the
possibilities of that new world which is as old as Time, I
began to see what it was beginning to mean to him who had
sensed its abysses as long ago as when he wrote "The Call
of the Wild," ay, and before that. With his synthetic
mind, he would have been a splendid exponent of what bids
fair to be the limitless scope and application of the prin
ciples of Psychoanalysis. At times, when he expounded his
hopes of what he would be able to accomplish in this
research I was caught up into his vision. But so terrific
was the marvel of what he dared dream he might do, that
one's every-day senses reeled away from the contem
plation. I have no words, no skill, with which to transfer
to my reader this look into the gulf. But why, Jack thought,
if he could learn to analyze the secret soul-stuff of the
individual and bring it up to the light of foreconsciousness,
could not he analyze the soul of the race, back and back,
ever farther into the shadows, to its murky beginnings!
His eyes, when he thus speculated, were those, not in the
least of a fanatic, but of a seer, deep as the ages. He
walked on air, yet the actual material practically of it
appealed before all.

While he laid aside the heavy volumes read and anno
tated, until such time — say on a voyage to Japan in 1917 — as
he could review them with me, Jack applied their principle
more than was entirely safe for the complacency of those
with whom he came in contact. If he had ever before used

324 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the world and its inhabitants to keep him interested in the
game of life, he now employed them in ways they never
guessed in casual association with him. Applying his new
system of approach, all in the way of social intercourse he
was delving into the soul-stuff of men and women as they
never would have dared analyze the significance of their
own repressions. He went to startling lengths in this
risky game of " playing with souls. " Old curiosities, long
since laid, were resurrected, to be dipped in the alem
bic of psychoanalysis, and he experimented with his own
caprices in the most unexpected ways.

Perhaps the majority of the minds which he laid bare
were not of a quality to make his investigation profitable.
However that may be, it brought to him — and this was my
greatest fear — yet more disillusion with the human element
that had already suffered much in his regard. When the
measure of a thinker's associates steadily shrinks in his
estimate, that thinker, maddened by their immobility to
ideas, is facing annihilation. The situation becomes insup
portable. The "will to live" weakens and breaks down, no
matter how fair the world nor Love how sweet. Jack's
conclusions were saddening in the extreme. A paragraph
from H. G. Wells 's "The Discovery of the Future" so
appositely expresses Jack's attitude from time to time, that
I shall quote it instead of trying to reconstruct his own
words :

"I do not think I could possibly join the worship of humanity
with any gravity or sincerity. Think of it ! Think of the positive
facts. There are surely moods for all of us when one can feel
Swift's amazement, that such a being should deal in pride. There
are moods when one can join in the laughter of Democritus ; and
they would come oftener were not the spectacle of human little
ness so abundantly shot with pain."

Wells goes on to say that the pain of the world is also
shot with promise ; but Jack at this stage was grudging of
this expectation.

THE WAE; HAWAII 325

I was too close to it all to see the full drift of his fall ;
or, better, in my characteristic way, while doing my best in
a given set of circumstances, I would not admit what I
shrank from facing. The test of my endurance was severe,
for Jack required so greatly of me in the capacities of wife,
lover, friend, even confessor, for he withheld nothing —
nothing, I repeat — of what he was passing through; and
my responsibility, it may be guessed, was almost more than
I could bear and preserve a cheerful poise. That he missed
little of this, I am assured. More than thrice he sud
denly remarked: "You are the only one in the world who
could live with me!" Which was with direct reference to
his intellectual vagaries, and not to any personal difficul
ties. It is all an inexpressibly dear heritage — the memory
of that with which he entrusted me. I might think I
had failed in many particulars, except for the continuance
of his confidence and his almost childlike dependence upon
me when his burden was too great. A generous friend,
talking with him shortly before his death, has given me
Jack's declaration, speaking of myself: "She has never
failed me. I have had the comfort of her stedfastness, and
have gained strength from it. She is always ready to act
with and for me at any moment. ' '

No matter how strange he seemed at times, nor how
isolate, I learned I must stand by, night and day, for his
instant need. There would be, say, a tirade against the
infinitesimal natures of folk, or an argument, and he might
work himself into a frenzy wherein I accused him of intel
lectual unfairness ; or, we might disagree vitally upon some
personal matter. Once, twice, I withdrew and left him to
work out his humor by himself. But he could not, or would
not. I found myself not daring to pursue this course ; and
thereafter, in the Islands and later at home, when the impul
sion was upon him, I did my best to maintain my end in
discussion, into the small hours if necessary, until he was
exhausted, when, suddenly, in his fighting-face there would

326 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

dawn the sweetness that disarmed anger and criticism alike
in friend and foe. He would fall asleep in my arms, awak
ening penitent for the pallor of my cheeks that no smile
could camouflage, and gratitude for the smile. A conversa
tion something like this would ensue :

"Bear with me, Mate Woman — you're all I've got."

"I do. I do."

' ' Then, do more than that!"

"I will! I will!"

Any chiding that he was not taking sufficient nourish
ment, and neglecting his exercise, elicited the time-honored
response :

"I'm all right — don't bother. And you're never up in
time to see the huge breakfast I tuck away — three cups of
coffee, with heavy cream, two soft-boiled eggs, half of a big
papaia!"

But it was months before I learned that every morning
the ample bedside repast, which he so enjoyed with his
morning Pacific Commercial Advertiser, was completely
lost. That abiding pride in his "cast-iron stomach" had
suffered an eclipse; and with it his God-given ability to
sleep whensoever he elected. This was indeed a desperate
case, and I was frightened, because from birth on I myself
had bedded with insomnia, and feared its consequences
upon one of Jack's temperament. Only three times did he
tamper with a narcotic, for he realized its peril. "Oh, have
no fear, my dear," he reassured me more than once, "I'll
never go that way. I want to live a hundred years ! ' '

It being an unwritten rule that I was never to be dis
turbed from sleep, I awoke in swift terror one morning in
Honolulu to find Jack, his face working with pain, at my
door:

' i I had to call you, Mate — I am sorry — but you must get
a doctor. I don 't know what it is, but it is awful ! ' ' And
he crept back to his sleeping-porch. His friend Dr. Walters

THE WAE; HAWAII 327

was out, and Dr. Herbert responded, as best he could help
ing Jack through the agony, diagnosing the cause as a
calculus.

I suppose it is a wise wife who, rather than make mar
riage hideous by nagging, lets her husband destroy himself
in his own uncaring way ! Even with the excruciating omen
of worse to come, Jack made little or no effort to put off
his day of dissolution. The friendly physicians exhorted in
vain: he clung to his diet of raw aku (bonita), and, aside
from the breakfast fruit and occasional poi, which he termed
a " beneficent food," quite neglected the vegetable nutri
ment his malady demanded, while the cramping of his ankles
did not lessen.

As for exercise, save for the most desultory and infre
quent dips off-shore, he took none. My question, "Are you
going to swim with me to-day ?" was oftenest met with:

"Yes — believe I will . . . No, I'm right in the thick of
this new box of reading-matter from home. Oh, I don't
know — the water looks so good . . . But no; I'll go out in
the hammock where I can read and watch you. ' 9 And his
bodily inertia won out.

But it would strike me, looking back across the seawall
to where, in blue kimono, he swung under the ancient hau
tree, that he read little; whenever I waved back to him
there was an immediate response that bridged the jade and
turquoise space. But the arm stretched out to me was all
too white from seeking the shadows. If I did not ask him
to go out, then, the same day or another, he would remind
me of it, with a mild reproach.

Not a block would he walk to the electric tram, but called
an automobile three miles from town whenever he wanted to
go in for a shave. If he were not going out, and expected
no company, he spent the day in bathing-trunks and kimono
and sandals, not only for coolness at work, but because it
was too much effort to dress. This calls up an incident
that occurred one day in Honolulu, though I did not come

328 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

upon the inwardness of it until long afterward. It goes to
illustrate the sheep-mindedness of the mass of beings who
wish to find famous men and women fashioned in the image
of the quibbling, foppish, gnat-brained incarnation that is
their own. Jack himself, small as was his respect for these,
never failed to react to the clumsy stab of their inert yet
harmful smugness — harmful because it influences and fixes
the attitude of masses of humans who might, otherwise
guided, attain a freer view of life.

A woman of Russian birth, passing through, wanted to
meet this man Jack London, who so dominated the fancy of
her countrymen. According to her story, certain tourist
acquaintances warned her : ' ' But he isn't decent — he 's likely
as not, we hear, to receive you dressed only in a kimono !"
The lady was not to be balked ; and one day, unannounced,
she called during Jack's working hours. In spite of his
irritation at being so unceremoniously interrupted, she
found him courteous and interesting, and did not stop
over-long.

"What did you think of him? What is he like?" her
informants asked.

"I think he is a very decent fellow, " the Russian began.

' ' But was n 't he in his kimono 1 ' '

"Why, yes — I believe he was," coolly she rejoined.
"And I want to say that, in his kimono, he seemed to me
more fully clothed than most of the men one meets in full
conventional attire."

Except that he sat through long dinners without eating,
Jack was normal enough to all intents. When anxious
hostesses drew his attention to the untouched plate, he
would repeat that story of the large breakfast, and declare
that except at a Hawaiian luau (feast), where he made a
practice of banqueting shamelessly, he would rather talk
than eat ; and thereupon he closed the topic by taking up the
thread of his discourse where it had been cut.

THE WAE; HAWAII 329

He drank very moderately. "Sometimes I think I'm
saturated with alcohol, so that my membranes have begun
to rebel," he observed upon more than one occasion. "See
— how little in the glass — and this is my first drink to-day ! ' '
A month before the end, in response to a telegram from
Dr. W. H. Geystweit, Pastor of the First Baptist Church,
San Diego, California, Jack wired :

"Never had much experience with wine-grape growing. The
vineyards I bought were old, worked out, worthless, so I pulled
out the vines and planted other crops. I still work a few acres
of profitable wine grapes. My position on alcohol is absolute,
nation-wide Prohibition. I mean absolute. I have no patience in
half-way measures. Half-way measures are unfair, are tantamount
to confiscation, and are provocative of underhand cheating, lying,
and law-breaking. When the nation goes in for nation-wide Pro
hibition, that will be the end of alcohol, and there will be no cheat
ing, lying nor law-breaking. Personally I shall continue to drink
alcohol for as long as it is accessible. When absolute Prohibition
makes alcohol inaccessible I shall drop drinking and it won 't be any
hardship on me and on men like me whose name is legion. And the
generation of boys after us will not know anything about alcohol
save that it was a stupid vice of their savage ancestors."

In Hawaii for the most part he ordered "soft" drinks
or "small beer" during the nights we spent in the open-air
cafes, I dancing, he visiting at the tables with his friends.
But ever he kept an eye upon me, as if looking for some one
stable in a crashing world. Seldom, swinging near, did I
fail to catch his glance and a little indulgent smile he had
for the "kid woman" who, loving the dance, had gone
without it for so many traveling years after marrying him.

In a coterie of excellent players among Honolulu's men
and women, both American and Hawaiian, much of Jack's
recreation time was at cards — mostly bridge, with now and
then a poker game.

To show the restlessness that was in him, I can instance

330 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the entertaining we did. Day after day at our house it
would be a luncheon, a bridge party, tea, swimming, a din
ner, and theatre, or dancing either at home or on the Roof
Garden or at "Heinie's," and, likely, a midnight swim
before bed. Some of the luncheon guests might be included
in the afternoon cards outside in the little jungle of that
magnificent hau tree, but new players had also been bidden.
A fresh bevy blew in for tea and bathing, and the diners
would be still another party. Friends for noonday or din
ner usually numbered an even dozen, since the round table
accommodated just that number. We lived in a whirl ; and
many times, while I was at the telephone inviting for three
different events for a certain day, Jack would come patter
ing in his straw sandals across the large palm-potted rooms,
and whisper : "While you're about it, better plan the crowds
for the day after."

A Honolulu neighbor, Charles Dana Wright, one day
asked Jack:

"Why do you always have twelve at your table?"

"Because it won't hold any more!" was Jack's reply.

He seemed running away from himself, filling in every
moment, as if uneasy with too many disengaged dates in
prospect. Yet he would suddenly tire of it all, and there
would be a lull. One night, after an undisturbed day when
we had worked, and swam, read aloud, played pinochle,
and eaten alone together, he breathed with satisfied
demeanor : "Happiest day I ever spent in Hawaii!"

He had a way, at work in his cool green lanai (veranda)
— a mile from where B.L.S. once wrote by Waikiki waters
— of looking aside upon me as I walked about the long
rooms ; and when I caught him at it, his lips would frame
kisses in the air. What was behind the inscrutable, star-
blue eyes that were never so beautiful as that summer in
his Happy Isles, when he made no attempt to retard an
illness that could not be less than fatal if not checked ? Was
that mind that had "known the worst too young," and that

THE WAR; HAWAII 331

he had systematically overworked, now longing for sur
cease, "restless for rest," as William Herbert Carruth so
aptly put it? Does that account for the apparently delibe
rate want of resistance? He, the eternal fighter, patently
refused to fight for the reconstruction of a failing body,
or to exert his powerful will to conserve his physical
strength. On the contrary, it would seem as if the longing,
at least of his unconscious mind, for cessation of effort to
continue existence, swung him into a non-resistance which
made for destruction. When he looked at me as he would
look, was he hiding something he knew would fill me with
terror — did he have an intuition that I would be unthinkably
alone with the falling of the autumn leaves ? One late after
noon, in the hammock, he read me "In Autumn, " from
George Sterling's "The Caged Eagle," just received from
the poet. His voice broke at the last, and the eyes he raised
to mine in a long, long gaze, were deep pools in which I felt
us both drowning. But when at length he spoke, it was of
the wonder of the man who had written the poem.

I shall never know. All I do know is that he was upon
the night ward slope of living, and that all I had to cling to
was what sometimes fell from his lips when I had thought
him absorbed in book or writing — abruptly, as if wrung
from him :

1 t God ! — Woman, if you knew how I love you ! ' '

And again, his eyes burning :

"Child, child — you don't know what love is!"

Or he would murmur in a golden voice, across the length
of the house, so that I must harken closely to hear :

"I love you ... I love you."

Once:

"Take my heart in both your hands, My Woman."

To me, who asked nothing from fate but to serve, he
said one day:

"I can refuse you nothing. Anything you ask for, in
seriousness, you may have. I am so entirely yours; you

332 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

can have anything you want of me. I'd do anything for
you — actually, I believe I'd murder, if you asked me?"
He added: "Some day, when we are seventy, you and
I, in the autumn of our long years together, I'll tell you
some things about myself — how I have come to know how
unthinkably I love you."

All this intensity was part of the raw state in which he
was, dying, the dear heart, and how were we to know? One
morning, it seems he thought I had told him a deliberate
falsehood in a vital connotation, and I was at a loss to
account for his alarming recklessness throughout the day.
That night, worried, for once I eavesdropped, and heard
him with his own soul: "To think of it! To think of it!"
he wrestled with despair. The next day, quite as unwit
tingly as I had dealt the erroneous impression, I undid the
same. Then it all came out, with boyish jubilance in his
relief, how he had agonized that "All I've got in the world"
had thrown him down !

When he heard that the old bungalow, whispering of
romance, was on the market, he came to me, his eyes dilating
with the pleasure of giving :

"Do you want me to buy it for you, or do you prefer to
wait till the war is done, and then get a sweet three-topmast
schooner, fit her out, throw aboard your grand piano, a big
launch, and a touring car, and start around the world for
years ! ' '

Naturally I chose the schooner, and told him that if for
only selfish reasons, the war could not terminate any too
soon to please me! — There he was, at it again — his
"crowded hour of glorious life" all too short for the large
plans for work, thought, play ! I finger the sun-tanned note
pad upon which he scribbled expense calculations for that
post-bellum voyage : Six men, so much ; Captain, so much ;
Engineer, Mate, Cook, Servants, Doctor — with loose mar
gins for his figures. "But, Mate," I objected, "that means
no letup for you — harder work than ever. " " What of it ? "

THE WAE; HAWAII 333

cheerily he laughed it off. "I make my work easy — Pve
got 'em all skinned to death !"

Those little note-pads of Jack's — I find them at every
turn. "Always carry a notebook, " he advised. "Travel
with it. Eat with it. Sleep with it. Slap into it every
stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap
paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil
markings endure longer than memory. ' '

Certain photographs, one of himself and me in the gar
den, and one of myself on Neuadd Hillside, he kept near his
work-table, and often looked at them. And at home after
ward, "Charmian, Charmicm . . ." he would murmur as he
had murmured the day we first met, "I love your name.
YouVe no idea how I stop all work and reading, and lie
here just looking at your face in the frame."

There were six weeks on end in Hawaii that Jack seemed
quite his healthy, hearty self. This was during what can
best be termed a "royal progress " upon which, in company
with Miss Mary Low, a part-Hawaiian friend, diamond-
trove of information and imagination, who made it possible
at that time, we encircled the "Big Island." The details
of this journey I have related in "Our Hawaii." It was a
passage of unalloyed pleasure, fraught with plans for the
future when we should return to do the thousand things
that this time must be left undone. In my hand at this
moment is one of Jack's yellow note-pad leaves, scribbled
with the most fragmentary penciled items :

"How not to know Hawaii . . . How the Tourist does
it — the tourist route — never dreams.

"How to know Hawaii. Wait — under that surface
excess of hospitality — the deeps of a remarkable people
— really exclusive . . . Make no quick judgments. Come
back, and come back, and then, some day, you will begin to
find yourselves not only in their homes but in their hearts.
And you will be well beloved ..."

334 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"I almost think, " he said in retrospect, "that this has
been the happiest month and a half I ever knew!"

On that trip, having finished " Michael Brother of
Jerry," he wrote his last gift to the Islands, the three
articles which were published in The Cosmopolitan Maga
zine, "My Hawaiian Aloha." A few short months there
after one of the Territory 7s most distinguished mouthpieces
said of him. "In the death of Jack London Hawaii suf
fered an irreparable loss. . . . Among our most lasting
memories of him will be his earnest and enthusiastic assis
tance in the organization of the Pan-Pacific Union. There
was nothing that he disliked more than making speeches;
but at meeting after meeting his voice was heard advocating
the principle of the brotherhood of mankind and the recog
nition of that principle as the guiding star of the peoples
of the Pacific."

Next, Jack produced a short story, "The Hussy," dat
ing the end of the manuscript at "Kohala, Hawaii, May 5,
1916." "The Hussy" is in book entitled "The Bed One,"
issued posthumously. Followed the short story, "The
Bed One," in which is evidenced the author's profound
meditation upon the reaching out of the most primordial
toward the most cosmic — all in stride with his study in race
consciousness. Sometimes I wonder if it can be possible,
in the ponderings of the dying scientist, Bassett, that
Jack London revealed more of himself than he would
have been willing to admit — or else, who knows? more of
himself than he himself realized. His ultimate discourage
ment with the endless strife of humanity even unto the
modern horrors of the Great War, are in the mouth of
his puppet, speculating upon the inhabitants of other
planets, and playing square with the old cannibal, Ngurn,
because, forsooth, the old man had, according to his
lights, ' l played squarer than square, ' ' and * l was in himself
a forerunner of ethics and contract, of consideration, and
gentleness in man. ' '

THE WAR; HAWAII 335

"Had they won Brotherhood? Or had they learned
that the law of love imposed the penalty of weakness and
decay? Was strife, life! Was the rule of the universe the
pitiless rule of natural selection V9

Some one has written of Jack London: 4'This Lord of
Life was never far from the consciousness that he held a
brief and uncertain sovereignty. ' ' He himself has said:

* ' Man, the latest of the ephemera, is pitifully a creature
of temperature, strutting out his brief day on the ther
mometer. " And: "All the human drift, from the first ape-
man to the last savant, is but a phantom, a flash and a flut
ter of movement across the infinite sky of the starry night. ' '
He thrilled to George Sterling's line, "The fleeting Systems
lapse like foam."

A couple of months before the "royal progress/' Jack
had sent in his resignation from the Socialist party, the
reasons given surprising some of his radical acquaintances
who had scoffed that he was becoming "soft."

"Radical!" he would snort, lurching about in his chair,
"next time I go to New York, I'm going to live right
down in the camp of these people who call themselves radi
cals. I'm going to tell them a few things, and make their
radicalism look like thirty cents in a fog! I'll show them
what radicalism is!"

Among his equipment of notes are the following ad
dresses :

The Liberal Club, The Greenwich Village Inn (Polly's
Restaurant) The Hotel Brevoort, James Donald Corley,
Hippolyte Havel, Sadakichi Hartmann, Charles and Albert
Boni, John Rampapas, Hutchins Hapgood, II Proletario,
J. J. Ettor and Iva Shuster, Carlo Tresca, Arturo Gio-
vannitti, McSorley's Saloon.

Jack's action in resigning, though it had been gather
ing momentum for some time, was precipitated by the with
drawal of a friend whose reasons were based upon the
prevalent "roughneck" methods of other than the "well-

336 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

balanced radicals." I can still hear Jack's battle-tread,
somewhat muffled by straw slippers, as he marched toward
my door, and his peremptory voice: "Take a letter —
please!" I can see him plant himself on the edge of
my bed, curls towsled, wide eyes black with purpose under
the brows that were like a sea-bird's wings, his full chest
half-exposed by the blue kimono, and one perfect leg thrust
forth to steady himself. And here is what he rapped out,
as fast as I could click the keys :

' 'Honolulu, March 7, 1916.
"Glen Ellen,

"Sonoma County, California.
"Dear Comrades:

"I am resigning from the Socialist Party, because of its lack of
fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle.

' ' I was originally a member of the old revolutionary, up-on-its-
hind-legs, fighting, Socialist Labor Party. Since then, and to the
present time, I have been a fighting member of the Socialist
Party. My fighting record in the Cause is not, even at this late date,
already entirely forgotten. Trained in the class struggle, as taught
and practiced by the Socialist Labor Party, my own highest judg
ment concurring, I believed that the working class, by fighting, by
never fusing, by never making terms with the enemy, could emanci
pate itself. Since the whole trend of Socialism in the United States
during recent years has been one of peaceableness and compromise,
I find that my mind refuses further sanction of my remaining a
party member. Hence my resignation.

' * Please include my comrade wife, Ghanaian K. London 's, resig
nation with mine.

"My final word is that Liberty, freedom, and independence, are
royal things that cannot be presented to, nor thrust upon, races
or classes. If races and classes cannot rise up and by their
strength of brain and brawn, wrest from the world liberty, free
dom, and independence, they never in time can come to these royal
possessions . . . and if such royal things are kindly presented to
them by superior individuals, on silver platters, they will know
not what to do with them, will fail to make use of them, and will

l!)ir>. JACK LONDON
Taken 0 days before he died

THE WAR; HAWAII 337

be what they have always been in the past . . . inferior races and
inferior classes.

11 Yours for the Revolution,

"Jack London/1

i

The foregoing, published in the Socialist press, caused
much comment. Jack's grim amusement can be pic
tured when it was reported that a distinguished mem
ber of the Party, upon reading it remarked: "I'd have done
the same long ago, for the same reasons, if I had not been
so prominent a figure in the movement. "

"And now," I queried, when Jack had got the letter off
his mind and cooled down, "what will you call yourself
henceforth — Eevolutionist, Socialist, what!"

"I am not anything, I fear," he said quietly. "I am all
these things. Individuals disappoint me more and more,
and more and more I turn to the land. . . . Well," he
reconsidered, "I might call myself a Syndicalist. It does
seem as if class solidarity, expressed in terms of the general
strike, would be the one means of the workers tying up the
world and getting what they want. It would raise Cain, of
course, but nothing ever seems to be accomplished without
raising Cain. A world-wide strike would produce inconceiv
able results. — But they won't stick together — there is too
much selfishness and too much inertia."

Surely, surely, Jack's experience with the "inertia of
the masses ' ' was not unique in the annals of reform move
ments. In Doctor William J. Robinson's "The Medical
Critic and Guide," I come across this sentence: "It is not
the slave that rebels against his slavery ; it is the free man
who sees the injustice of slavery who starts the fight for its
abolition." Other social seers had suffered unto death. I
could not but pray that the healthier side of Jack's philoso
phy of life might preserve him from despair.

Concerning sabotage, he stood somewhat like this:
Peaceful methods having failed, and with his views on the

338 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

frightfulness of capitalist exploitation of labor, he would
not hesitate, were he an underpaid wage-slave, insidiously
to wreck the machinery of production by the means of which
he had become the underpaid, underfed, overworked, ex
ploited tool and fool of his economic masters. But when
confronted with the futile, desultory methods of bombing
innocent persons by mistake, his impatience knew no
bounds. Following one such mishap that had shaken the
country, I asked him what he thought of it ; and he used a
word I had never heard in seriousness from his lips :

i 'I think it is wicked."

Many resignations followed Jack's — quite an avalanche,
in fact, when the Socialist Party at the St. Louis Conven
tion in 1917 pledged itself to oppose, by every means within
its power, the prosecution of the war against Germany.

When James Howard Moore, because of heartbreak over
the world, had put a bullet through his brain, Jack was
deeply moved. In his handwriting, at the head of a printed
address delivered by Clarence S. Darrow at the funeral
services, I find this :

"Disappointment like what made Wayland (Appeal to
Reason) kill himself — and many like me resign."

Eeading over the mass of material for this Biography,
I am struck anew by Jack's old faith in the workingman,
and anew saddened by his ultimate disillusion. Let me
quote a letter, written several years before he died, stating
the nobilities upon which he had founded his hope :

1 ' To the Central Labor Council,
"Alameda County:

' ' I cannot express to you how deeply I regret my inability to be
with you this day. But, believe me, I am with you in the brother
hood of the spirit, as all you boys, in a similar brotherhood of the
spirit, are with our laundry girls in Troy, New York.

"Is this not a spectacle for gods and men? — the workmen of
Alameda County sending a share of their hard-earned wages three

THE WAK; HAWAII 339

thousand miles across the continent to help the need of a lot of
striking laundry girls in Troy !

"And right here I wish to point out something that you all
know, but something that is so great that it cannot be pointed out too
often, and that grows only greater every time it is pointed out, —
AND THAT IS, THAT THE STRENGTH OF ORGANIZED
LABOR LIES IN ITS BROTHERHOOD. There is no brotherhood
in unorganized labor, no standing together shoulder to shoulder,
and as a result unorganized labor is weak as water.

* ' And not only does brotherhood give organized labor more fight
ing strength but it gives it, as well, the strength of righteousness.
The holiest reason that men can find for drawing together into
any kind of an organization is BROTHERHOOD. And in the end
nothing can triumph against such an organization. Let the church
tell you that servants should obey their masters. This is what the
church told the striking laundry girls of Troy. Stronger than this
mandate is brotherhood, as the girls of Troy found out when the
boys of California shared their wages with them. (Ah, these girls
of Troy! Twenty weeks on strike and not a single desertion from
their ranks! And ah, these boys of California, stretching out to
them, across a continent the helping hand of brotherhood ! )

"And so I say, against such spirit of brotherhood, all machina
tions of the men-of-graft-and-grab-and-the-dollar are futile.
Strength lies in comradeship and brotherhood, not in a throat-cut
ting struggle where every man's hand is against man. This com
radeship and brotherhood is yours. I cannot wish you good luck
and hope that your strength will grow in the future, because broth
erhood and the comrade-world are bound to grow. The growth
cannot be stopped. So I can only congratulate you boys upon the
fact that this is so.

"Yours in the brotherhood of man,"

That Jack London expected no glory nor even lasting
appreciation from his comrades for his life-long work in
the interests of Socialism, was evident to me early in our
association. It was with utter absence of bitterness that
he said:

"In a few years the crowd I have worked for and with,

340 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

the Socialists, will have entirely forgotten that a fellow
named Jack London ever did a stroke to help along. I shall
be entirely forgotten, or counted out, or, at best, merely
mentioned.'7

And when, even in his own short time he had proved his
own words, in spite of a cool intellectual attitude he showed
the hurt to his affections. There is bitterness and to spare,
though essentially toward the race of men who had dis
appointed his warm confidence, in the following, already
referred to in part, written in his last months for a Socialist
publication :

"Some years ago Alexander Berkman asked me to write an
introduction to his 'Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.' This is the
introduction. I was naive enough to think that when one intellect
ual disagreed with another intellectual the only difference would
be intellectual. I have since learned better. Alexander Berkman
could not see his way to using my introduction, and got some one
else to write a more sympathetic one for him. Also, socially, com
radely, he has forgotten my existence ever since.

"By the same token, because the socialists and I disagreed
about opportunism, ghetto politics, class consciousness, political
slates, and party machines, they, too, have dismissed all memory,
not merely of my years of fight in the cause, but of me as a social
man, as a comrade of men, as a fellow they ever embraced for hav
ing at various times written or said things they described as
doughty blows for the Cause. On the contrary, by their only
printed utterances I have seen, they deny I ever struck a blow or
did anything for the Cause, at the same time affirming that all the
time they knew me for what I was — a Dreamer.

"I'm afraid I did dream some dreams about their brains,
which now I find knocked into a cocked hat by their possession of
the pitiful humanness that is the birthright of all sons of men.
My dream was that my comrades were intellectually honest. My
awakening was that they were as unfair, when prejudice entered,
as all the other human cattle entered to-day in the human race. ' '

There are some of Jack's compeers who do not forget,
who give him his place, and a high place. And there are

THE WAE; HAWAII 341

others who, perceiving him nurse his efficiency by decent
living after his too-lean years, became fearful that he might
lose his head through worldly success, but held judg
ment and were rewarded for their openmindedness. One
socialist, not fussing as to whether Jack belonged to the
Socialist Party, or any party, had this to say: "He was one
of us. A genuine, strenuous American, he fought a good
fight in the sacred cause of human progress. Against the
predatory Big Interests' attempt to enslave the workers
and the Booze Interests ' attempt to degrade the workers,
his pen was a mighty weapon. Like a true comrade he died
fighting. Alas, my Comrade !" But sadly enough I note
that only too often his name is missing from the roster that
includes his intellectual friends such as Walling, Spargo,
Hunter, Stokes, Heron.

Jack's especial bete noir was the type of socialist, of
either sex, who heckled him because he declined to lecture
before small groups. Wasted upon these hecklers was his
argument that with a stroke of his pen, while following tem
peramental bents in manner of living, he could reach
millions, whereas his voice could be heard by but a few.
This being so, he did not see why he should misapply energy
by speaking to a few, when he so disliked public appear
ances. Further, reports of his speeches were almost invari
ably garbled. His gospel as propounded in his books was
not garbled. Ergo, and finally, he would write rather than
talk. Incidentally, his voice had gone back on him, so that
it became husky at any attempt to project it into large
spaces. Far from regretting this break-down in his
anatomy, he hailed it with frank delight as another ex
cuse from lecturing. The failure of his throat was pre
cipitated, happily enough, by an excess of laughter at the
Bohemian Jinks. He had returned unable for a while to
speak above a faint wheeze, the vocal cords ruptured
forever.

He would add that he had done his share of platform

342 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

work, and why not step out and let the younger generation
have a chance. Here is his somewhat impatient reply to a
suppliant who had tried sarcasm upon him :

1 'Dear Comrade:

"In reply to yours of September 14. I don't see anything to
laugh at. With courtesy and consideration, on an average of five
letters a day, I turn down propositions of comrades that run all
the way from gold mines to perpetual motion. I sent you what
I thought was a fair, courteous, sweet-natured and comradely let
ter. If you choose to laugh at that letter and me — why, go to it !
I, however, am very sorry that you should laugh.

"You say you had hoped that your letter would have inspired
me to nobler things (those are your words) . What nobler things? —
to attend a meeting at your place which you say nobody attended ?
To put money in your project and raise for you a temporary fund,
when I am worrying over my own overdue life-insurance? FOP
heaven's sake, dear woman, be fair, play fair, and get away from
your own self-centering long enough to remember that all the
others in the world may not be persuaded nor clubbed into fol
lowing your immediate lead and desire, and that because they are
not to be so persuaded nor clubbed is no license for you to laugh

at them* ' ' Yours for the Revolution, ' '

Much earlier than that, in answer to a call that he could
not afford, he had written :

1 i It 's this way : I feel that I have done and am doing a pretty
fair share of work for the Revolution. I guess my lectures alone
before Socialist organizations have netted the Cause a few hundred
dollars, and my wounded feelings from the personal abuse of the
Capitalist papers ought to be rated at several hundred more. There
is not a day passes that I am not reading up socialism and filing
socialistic clippings and notes. The amount of work that I in a
year contribute to the cause of socialism would earn me a whole
lot of money if spent in writing fiction for the market."

It is not remarkable, however, that Jack London was
much misinterpreted by the general run of men lost in

THE WAR; HAWAII 343

pettifogging. He would not even be circumscribed by his
broadest conceptions, if I may be allowed a paradox. And
there was where he invited trouble with economists, who
wanted him to be what they called consistent. The many
sparkling facets of his mind dazzled and befuddled merely
average thought processes. I speak with feeling. Some
times we would battle for hours, he and I, earnestly, hotly,
because, although I was doing the best I knew how, he was
thinking so far beyond the logic of ordinary mortals who
think they think. " Don't you seel Can't you get it?" he
would almost wail in ardor and onrush to convince. And
we would metaphorically roll up our sleeves and go at it
hammer and tongs. To me, who was more "kin" to him
than the rest, he declined to "mute his trumpets. His own
woman must speak his language. And then, suddenly, out
would slip some little key-word he had unwittingly left
unsaid, the door would fly open, and I would seem to drop a
thousand light-years in space, alighting softly, happily, yet
excessively puzzled at last by the cosmic simplicity of his
reasoning.

In logic he bowed to no one. His supple mind that
never stiffened from disuse was of a clarity that allowed of
no master. He but grasped and applied the conclusions of
Master-minds, used them in the mosaic of his own. Yet
here is a curious thing : In his dreams, at widely separated
intervals, appeared the Man who would contest Jack's self-
mastership, to whom he would eventually bend a vanquished
intelligence. He never met such an one in the flesh, yet that
entity stalked through more than the hallucinations of sleep.
It was long ago he first told me of this ominous figure in his
consciousness. The last manifestation was within a very
few years of his death. The man, imperial, inexorable with
destiny, yet strangely human, descended, alone, a vast cas
cade of stairways, and Jack, at the foot, looked up and
waited as imperially for the meeting that was to be his
unknown fate. But the Nemesis never, in that form at least,

344 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

overtook him. Was it Death ? Or may it have been a reflec
tion of his own most exalted self that he came face to face
with at these times 1 There showed a certain pathos in his
accounts. I do not think he had yet brought his inklings of
psychoanalysis to bear upon his interpretations.

What gifts Jack had for all who could see and hear!
But the world is prone to look askance at gifts that are
tendered freely, without price. And what he offered was so
open-handed, so open-hearted. He never wore nor waved a
flag — his flags, his colors, were in his eyes, streamed from
his pen, and waved from his printed page. Every one who
tried to understand him was better for it. When persons
say, "I never met him," I can only return, "I am sorry. "
If it was a privilege to know his work, it was a greater privi
lege to know himself, if ever so slightly, for he was greater
than his work. He had few enemies among those who came
into personal contact with him. With all his self-knowledge,
for the most part in social dealings he preserved that uncon
sciousness of self which is above modesty, yet which spells
modesty to the casual observer. And no matter how firmly
he believed himself right, fought for it, shouted it, he also
respected a similar belief existing in his opponent. This
charity, however, had been sorely taxed during earlier
years, by dark and helpless souls incapable alike of clear
reasoning or appreciating his superiority ; hence his impa
tience with inconsequential minds. But with the majority
of acquaintances, no frown of his, no stern word, ever out
weighed the morning of his smile, that beautiful smile that
lured the bitterest antagonist under his charm.

Much non-understanding arose from the misleading
habit of others in quoting his isolated opinions without
context, deleting them of the vital connotations that his
catholicity brought to ripe consideration of any theme.
Only a few of his fellows could anticipate or supply the
thousand factors embodied in his thought. Myself, I learned
to hesitate before leaping to conclusions, to wait for the

THE WAK; HAWAII 345

full drift. Just about the time, say, that Jack would begin
to sink into lowest disheartenment over the abysmal sig
nificance of the War, and our failure to bear a hand, all at
once he would flame anew to the undying wonder of the
human. A case in point arose when Hall Caine wrote him
from London, asking a contribution for the "King Albert
Book. ' ' Jack responded :

"Belgium is rare, Belgium is unique. Among men arises on rare
occasions a great man, a man of cosmic import ; among nations on
rare occasions arises a great nation, a nation of cosmic import. Such
a nation is Belgium. Such is the place Belgium attained in a day
by one mad, magnificent, heroic leap into the azure. As long as
the world rolls and men live, that long will Belgium be re
membered. All the human world passes, and will owe Belgium a
debt of gratitude, such as was never earned by any nation in the
History of Nations. It is a magnificent debt, a proud debt that all
the nations of men will sacredly acknowledge. ' '

Yet the very sending of the foregoing from Oakland
brought him face to face again with human smallness. He
thought to see if the cable company would share in the
tribute by standing half the expense of the message. They
politely declined, and Jack shrugged his habitual " Cheap
at the price to learn them, ' ' under such circumstances.

The murder of Edith Cavell,

". . . a simple English nurse,
Slaughtered between a challenge and a curse,"

snapped something in Jack. Eyes and soul full of this and
the rest of the mad slaughter, he became more and more
furious with the brutal stupidity of the Hun. He lingered
in almost speechless wonder over the monstrous bestiality
of German cartoons, in nearly all of which lay a boomerang
unguessed by that same bungling stupidity.

He did not believe this to be a capitalistic war, but that
it was being waged for a principle at its best, and must be

346 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

fought to the death. He would have stamped his approval,
I know, upon the ' ' irreduceable minimum " of peace terms,
and Mr. Balfour's deliverance: "Next to being enslaved by
Germany, there is no worse thing than being liberated
by her."

Jack would refer to Germany as the "Mad Dog of
Europe. "

"I am with the allies life and death. Germany to-day
is a paranoiac. She has the mad person's idea of her own
ego, and the delusion of persecution — she thinks all nations
are against her. She possesses also the religious mania
— she thinks God is on her side. These are the very com
monest forms of insanity, but never before in history has a
whole nation gone insane."

"God help them when the British turn savage!" he
cried at the first rumor of hostilities. His opinion of the
country has been very adequately expressed by one who
fought in France : ' i Germany has no honor, no chivalry, no
mercy. Germany is a bad sportsman. Germans fight like
wolves in a pack, and without initiative or resource if
compelled to fight singly."

A hundred times I have heard Jack say: "It will be a
war of attrition." He saw no abrupt termination, no
brilliant, decisive victory. But for the Armistice, he might
have been proven right. He was also heard to say that he
believed the nations would eventually repudiate their war
debts.

The Pathe Exchange wrote on June 16, asking his views
upon the meaning of the World War, and this was his reply :

• "I believe the World War so far as concerns, not individuals
but the entire race of man, is good.

' * The World War has compelled man to return from the cheap
and easy lies of illusion to the brass tacks and iron facts of reality.
It is not good for man to get too high up in the air above reality.

* ' The World War has redeemed from the fat and gross material-

THE WAR; HAWAII 347

ism of generations of peace, and caught mankind up in a blaze of
the spirit.

"The World War has been a pentecostal cleansing of the spirit
of man."

Another of his public utterances:

"I believe intensely in the Pro-Ally side of the war. I believe
that the foundation of civilization rests on the pledge, the agree
ment, and the contract. I believe that the present war is being
fought out to determine whether or not men in the future may
continue in a civilized way to depend upon the word, the pledge,
the agreement, and the contract.

"As regards a few million terrible deaths, there is not so
much of the terrible about such a quantity of deaths as there is
about the quantity of deaths that occur in peace times in all
countries in the world, and that has occurred in war times in
the past.

"Civilization at the present time is going through a Pente
costal cleansing that can result only in good for mankind. "

That none may misconstrue the central paragraph,
but may know upon what the assertion was based, I append
this item from the Scientific American :

"Industrial accidents cost this country 35,000 human lives and
many millions of dollars annually, according to the Arizona State
Safety News. In addition, dismemberments and other serious in
juries total about 350,000 yearly, while the annual number of
minor accidents, causing loss of time, exceeds 2,000,000."

It is interesting, while on the War, to quote his disagree
ment, when a youth, with David Starr Jordan :

" There is something wrong with Dr. Jordan's war
theory, which is to the effect that, the best being sent out
to war, only the second best, the men who are left, remain
to breed a second-best race, and that, therefore, the human
race deteriorates under war. If this be so, if we have sent
forth the best we bred and gone on breeding from the men
who were left, and since we have done this for ten thousand

348 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

milleniums and are what we splendidly are to-day, then
what unthinkably splendid and god-like beings must have
been our forebears those ten thousand milleniums ago.
Unfortunately for Dr. Jordan's theory, these forebears can
not live up to this fine reputation. "

His full emotions toward the United States in with
holding help from

". . . the embattled hosts that kept
Their pact with freedom while we slept!"

are expressed in a telegram sent in reply to a New York
daily asking his choice at election time, and of which I have
no record that the paper dared print it :

"I have no choice for President. Wilson has not enamored me
with past performances. Hughes has not enamored me with the
promise of future performances. There is nothing to hope from
ether of them, except that they will brilliantly guide the United
States down her fat, helpless, lonely, unhonorable, profit-seeking
way to the shambles to which her shameless unpreparedness is lead
ing her. The day is all too near when any first power or any two
one-horse powers can stick her up and bleed her bankrupt. We
stand for nothing except fat. We are become the fat man of the
nations, whom no nation loves. My choice for President is Theo
dore Roosevelt, whom nobody in this fat land will vote for because
he exalts honor and manhood over the cowardice and peace loving-
ness of the worshipers of fat. ' '

To Henry Meade Bland, a month before his death Jack
wrote :

"I am inclosing you herewith a clipping about * Martin Eden.'
'Martin Eden,' and 'The Sea Wolf a long time before 'Martin
Eden/ were protests against the philosophy of Nietzsche, insofar
as the Nietzschean philosophy expounds strength and individualism,
even to the extent of war and destruction, against cooperation,
democracy, and socialism. Here is the world war, the logical out
come of the Nietzschean philosophy.

' ' Read both these books yourself to get my point of view. Also

THE WAR; HAWAII 349

make note that no reviewer ever got my point of view in those two
books, and that this is the first time I have ever shouted my point
of view in those two books."

The theory of alternate eras of Evolution and Dissolu
tion fought with his work for the human. Yet, casting back
into the hopelessness of the ages, citing fourteen cities built
one atop another, and all lapsed, gone, with their pomp and
circumstance — yet, I say, Jack suffered unendurably over
the Great War, and perished in the midst of his deepest of
all Great Disgusts because of America's " Safety First7'
policy that held us from protesting even the Belgian atro
cities. We blunder along. The times blunder along. His
tory-making blunders along. And he saw the blundering
way of the race.

His main comfort throughout that Armageddon was his
Anglo-Saxonism, his pride in England in the conduct of her
" popular" war. How he would have rejoiced in the invin
cible combination of American man-power and British sea-
power! I am exasperated all the time, consciously and
unconsciously, that he is not alive and quick, to function in
the gigantic tangle of world events growing out of the
war — to see his own prognostications taking shape, and to
lend a hand in the reconstruction. Indeed, it is hard to
write calmly of this creature who strove so manfully for the
great and simple integrities of human intercourse, looking
as he did far through and beyond the small, petty thing of
the moment. Always, while responding to the little tragical
affairs of men, he could but compare these with the big,
cosmic facts and dreams that lured him on. This verse, by
I know not whom, so well envisages the Jack London whom
I knew :

' ' Your stark vision and cold fire,

Your singing truth, your vehement desire

To cut through lies to life.

These move behind the printed echoes here,

The paper strife,

350 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

The scurry of small pens about your name,
Measuring, praising, blaming by the same
Tight rule of thumb that makes their own
Inadequacy known.' '

How often I start up to share with him the very things
he so missed and would love to know from the lips of fellow
authors. "He was an honest writer, " says an Englishman.
That would have pleased him above all things. And an
other: "A strong and virile writer of clean prose — robust,
honest, straightforward, and an artist. " Berton Braley's
i t He never struck a ribald note, ' ' calls to mind a conversa
tion in Honolulu. Alexander Hume Ford exclaimed:

1 'But, Jack, you have never written anything smutty
— you Ve done almost everything else ! ' ' He had meant to
be facetious, but in a flash Jack was all gravity :

"No! — and I never shall. I have never yet written
a line for print that I would be ashamed for my two little
girls who are growing up to see and read, and I never
shall I"

To me he would say : l ' When I swear my worst, I really
don 't mean it — only words, letting off steam. But when you
say 'Damn!' you are positively evil in your ferocity!
Wicked woman ! ' '

Never shall I forget his indignation, too vast for any
expletives at his command, when a minister of the Gospel
wrote him that his novel "The Little Lady of the Big
House" was unclean, unfit for the youth of America to
read. "Show me!" he raged, "where there is a line in that
book 'unfit' for any young man or woman to read!"
Hard upon this accusation came a book-review in a con
servative New England monthly, employing the most extra
ordinary nomenclature to interpret the alleged pruriency of
the book. Jack could not contain his ire, but started a battle
royal with the sons of Adam who had in his opinion so
degenerated as not to know clean frankness when they saw

THE WAE; HAWAII 351

it. There is no telling where the controversy might have
fetched up, had he lived. "I've given over sitting back and
listening to gross misinterpretation of my clean and healthy
motives," he said with smoldering eyes. "It is like mali
cious slander, and whenever it appears I am going after it
and knock off its ugly head in the open ! "

How does the foregoing comport with this : * * He was an
uplift to the young. The world is better and purer for his
having lived — an inspiration to thousands of men and
women to work and keep on working, to create and keep on
creating, to live the full life wherever they are or whatever
may be their work."

My copy of "The Little Lady of the Big House," dated
three months before Jack died, carries this inscription :

"The years pass. You and I pass. But yet our love abides —
more firmly, more deeply, more surely, for we have built our love
for each other, not upon the sand, but upon the rock.

* ' Your Lover-Husband. ' '

In the last weeks of his life, that was often the bur
den of his talk with me — the firm foundation of the house
of love we had builded in the decade of our close com
panionship. So, in my memories of that year of unusual
vicissitudes in our fortunes, the warm and deathless love-
message in his hand in "The Little Lady of the Big House"
is a rock of ages, made yet more immovable by the declara
tion in Jack 's next volume. i ' The Turtles of Tasman, ' ' the
last he ever was to hold in his fingers :

"After it all, and it all, and it all, here we are, all in all, all in
all.

' ' Sometimes I just want to get up on top of Sonoma Mountain
and shout to the world about you and me. Arms ever around and
around,

"Mate-Man."
"The Ranch,
"Oct. 6, 1916."

CHAPTER XL

THE LAST SUMMER
1916

UPON returning from Hawaii in August, Jack went
about making plans to get away to New York three
months thence. His contract with Mr. Hearst was due to
expire at the end of another year, and he wished to be
timely in reconnoitering the market. His requirements,
looking toward ranch expansion and rehabilitating the red
ruins of the Wolf House, were not diminishing. From
Honolulu he had urged his sister to gather the materials ;
but she has ever since contended that something more than
want of funds held her back. The second cutting of logs
had long been seasoning. There was what I can only call a
telepathic impulse that had more than once warned her
when all was not well with Jack — a sudden intuition that he
was ill or in difficulties. She had not failed in this present
instance, and I knew, when her eyes rested upon his telltale
face at the dock, that some premonition had been verified.
Jack's secretary, his sister Ida's widower, after Jack's
death reported that Eliza had said that day :

"Our Jack has not come back to us."

When in Honolulu, he had first broached the New York
trip, my unexpected decision to remain at home disquieted
him as much as had my intention to go alone to the Islands
on the occasion of his projected Fleet trip through the
Canal.

"At least," he urged, "don't quite make up your mind
that you are not going with me. Give it more thought. "

352

THE LAST SUMMER 353

I had been seized with determination that was not to be
resisted, to revise old Hawaiian notes into the companion
book of my "Log of the Snark," and knew beyond question
that there could never be time nor strength to give to it un
less Jack were absent. When he had gone to a farther port,
never to return, a railroad ticket for New York, dated for
just a week after his death, lay upon the roll-top desk
beside his work-table. But he had not been happy about
my consistent refusal to accompany him.

August 9 to 13 he spent at Bohemian Grove, bringing
home George Sterling and James Hopper. On the 17th he
finished a short story begun on the steamer, * * The Kanaka
Surf," and before leaving for the State Fair on Septem
ber 3, had completed another, "When Alice Told Her
Soul," both included in "On the Makaloa Mat."

In "When Alice Told Her Soul," underlying its rollick
ing humor, Jack evidences that his feet had crossed the
threshold of psychoanalytical understanding, and it is
fascinating to note, in Jung's "Psychology of the Uncon
scious," marked passages showing the concepts that
quickened Jack's imagination to express itself in that tale.
Knowing what I already knew of Jack's last days, it was
wonderful to check up this knowledge by the aid of those
markings. It was my privilege to have the guidance of a
pupil of Jung's, our friend Mary Wilshire. Here is an
underlined section:

"The possession of a subjectively important secret generally
creates a disturbance."

"It may be said that the whole art of life shrinks to the one
problem of how the libido may be freed in the most harmless way
possible. Therefore, the neurotic derives special benefit in treat
ment when he can at last rid himself of its various secrets."

Upon this Jack based his picture of the woman strug
gling to free her soul from a life-long accumulation of

354 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

secrets which led her to the confessional of a mongrel Billy
Sunday type of evangelist.

In the last story ever written by this master of the short
story, "The Water Baby," completed on October 2, the
theme is more subtly presented through the medium of
Hawaiian mythology. Throughout Dr. Jung's chapter on
"Symbolism of Mother and Rebirth," there are penciled
indications of Jack's grasp of the meaning of folk-lore and
mythology of recorded time. Also the comprehension of
how to raise lower desires to higher expressions. He has
underscored Jesus 's challenge to Nicodemus, cited by Jung :

"Think not carnally or thou art carnal, but think sym
bolically and then thou art spirit."

"The Water Baby" is clearly a symbolic representa
tion of the Rebirth, the return to the Mother, exemplified by
the arguments of the old Hawaiian Kohokumi. A similar
chord is struck in the following paragraph from Jung's
book, indicated by Jack:

"The blessed state of sleep before birth and after birth
is, as Joel observed, something like old shadowy memories
of that unsuspecting thoughtless state of early childhood,
where as yet no opposition disturbed the peaceful flow of
dawning life, to which the inner longing always draws us
back again and again, and from which the active life must
free itself anew with struggle and death, so that it may not
be doomed to destruction. Long before Joel, an Indian
Chief, had said the same thing in similar words to one of
the restless wis-e men : * Ah, my brother, you will never learn
to know the happiness of thinking nothing and doing noth
ing; this is next to sleep; this is the most delightful thing
there is. Thus we were before birth ; thus we shall be after
death.' "

Even in "Like Argus of the Ancient Times," written in
the first half of September, is exhibited, in the "Freudian
dream" of old Tarwater, as he faces extinction in the Arctic
forest, the influence of Jack's probings into the stuff of

THE LAST SUMMER 355

the psyche. And to the lighter reader, I call attention to
the fact that Jack himself walks across some of the pages
as young Liverpool.

Jack's emphasis upon the primitive elements in life did
not emanate from the fact that his readers especially
wanted it, because upon this point he was in conflict from
first to last, tooth and nail, with editors and reviewers. He
was thorough, that is all. It can easily be seen how
his early instinctive use of the methods of psychoanalysis
abetted this thoroughness in seeking for the noumenon of
things, the better to reveal the process by which man has
become what he is to-day. Look in "Before Adam" and
"The Star Rover," again to find evidence of his knowing
how important a part is played in our lives by old,
primal emotions, long thought extinct. To him the work of
Freud and Jung and others of the school presented a psy
chological-philosophical key to the "understanding and
practical advancement of human life" which leads to syn
thetic evaluation of human endeavor. It was inevitable
that his brain, which was both analytic and synthetic, should
first take hold of the analytic half of psychological under
standing and quite as inevitably pass into the synthetic
half which forms the whole of psychological understanding.
With quick, incisive mind he apprehended the scope of the
Freudian method in contemplation of the material thus
acquired, and then with Jung moved on into the realm of
cosmic urge of which man's psychic energy is a part.

A man of Jack London's fearless quality, who prized
truth at its proper worth, could but accord a royal welcome
to any form of philosophy which offered to render knowl
edge more complete. His was "the character and intelli
gence which makes it possible for him to submit himself to
a facing of his naked soul, and to the pain and suffering
which this often entails." This, from Dr. Beatrice Hinkle's
Introduction to Jung's book, Jack had heavily underlined.
To face his naked soul he dared to the uttermost, but that

356 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

was not new with him. It was the old tragedy that began
with his earliest gropings. Yet see, in another marked
passage, how in his loneliness he realized himself as brother
to all other human beings :

11 To those who have been able to recognize their own
weakness and have suffered in the privacy of their own
souls, the knowledge that these things have not set them
apart from others, but that they are the common property
of all and that no one can point the finger of scorn at his
fellow, is one of the greatest experiences of life and is
productive of the greatest relief. "

"My one great weakness, " Jack once wrote to Cloudes-
ley Johns, "is the study of human nature. " And when
human nature through its repressions baffled discernment,
he suffered inexpressibly. He had us bared to the quick
those last days. After a set-to with his sister, on ranch
questions, or personal ones growing out of controversy, he
cried, trying to pierce her brain :

"Pd give my right hand to know what you are really
thinking of me ! ' '

And to me, in privacy, after I had been almost overreach
ing myself in self -illumination — once or twice, alack, goaded
even to resentment — lie would grit out, intensely, with a
gesture of despair:

"You tell me this and you tell me that, and you state
your reasons. But your true inner impulsions are withheld
in spite of yourself. Close as we are, you and I, hard as
we strive to give ourselves to each other, the old reticences
remain, repressing the utmost revelation. You do your best.
It is not enough. Can 't you see, oh, my dear, can 't you let
go completely, and let me see the real you that I want to
fathom? ... I'd give my soul to know what you are
actually thinking ! ' '

But when, in sudden unasked circumstances, our minds
came together in almost superhuman enlightenment, the
man was caught up into a supreme and wondrous exalta-

THE LAST SUMMER 357

tion. I can only think that to sustain such heights one must
needs seek a new world in which to live !

Bead this section of Dr. Hinkle's Introduction, which,
noted by Jack, throws light upon the struggle extraordi
nary which he was making to come breast to breast with
us in mental sympathy:

" There is frequently expressed among people the idea
of how fortunate it is that we cannot see each other 's
thoughts, and how disturbing it would be if our real feelings
could be read. But what is so shameful in these secrets of
the soul? They are in reality our own egotistic desires, all
striving, longing, wishing for satisfaction, for happiness;
those desires which instinctively crave their own gratifica
tion, but which can only be really fulfilled by adapting them
to the real world and to the social group. ' '

"The value of self-consciousness lies in the fact that man
is enabled to reflect upon himself and learn to understand
the true origin and significance of his actions and opinions,
that he may adequately value the real level of his develop
ment and avoid being self -deceived and therefore inhibited
from finding his biological adaptation. He need no longer
be unconscious of the motives underlying his actions or hide
himself behind a changed exterior, in other words, be merely
a series of reactions to stimuli, as the mechanists have it,
but he may to a certain extent become a self-creating and
self-determining being."

I shall never cease to remember the day when, all a-tip-
toe with discovery, Jack entered the dining room, slipped
into his chair and repeated the foregoing italicized sentence.
I, knowing his theretofore immovable position regarding
free will, sat aghast at the implication upon his tongue. At
length :

"Do you realize what you are saying? What you are
implying ?"

"I know how you feel — how surprised you are," he an
swered. "But it almost would seem that I can grasp, from

358 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

this, some sort of inkling of free will. I'll explain further
— we will read together. ' '

Bear with me, in fairness to a comprehension of the
point Jack London, as an individual, a member of society,
and an artist, had reached when he descended "into the
dark," while I quote a few, so very few of the many, marked
sentences from Dr. Hinkle 's introduction :

' ' He, Jung, saw in the term libido a concept of unknown nature,
comparable with Bergson's elan vital, a hypothetical energy of life,
which occupies itself not only in sexuality but in various physio
logical and psychological manifestations such as growth, develop
ment, hunger and all the human activities and interests. This
cosmic energy or urge manifested in the human being he calls
libido and compares it with the energy of physics. Although recog
nizing, in common with Freud as well as with many others, the
primal instinct of reproduction as the basis of many functions and
present-day activities of mankind no longer sexual in character,
he repudiates the idea of still calling them sexual, even though
their development was a growth originally out of the sexual.
Sexuality and its various manifestations Jung sees as most im
portant channels occupied by libido, but not the exclusive ones
through which libido flows.

"In this achievement lies the hopeful and valuable side of this
method — the development of the synthesis. "

" — an absolute truth and an absolute honesty.'*

" — the often quite unbearable conflict of his weaknesses with
his feelings of idealism."

"The importance of this instinct (sexual) upon human life is
clearly revealed by the great place given to it under the name of
love in art, literature, poetry, romance and all beauty from the
beginning of recorded time."

I was convinced that no mortal frame could out-last
the terrific strain Jack was putting upon his own. Some
thing had to break. And one can only give thanks forever
that it was the body. That was the lesser sacrifice.

At this late date there rises out of my mind, quite
humbly, the question as to whether certain independent

THE LAST SUMMER 359

manifestations of myself to which he had been unaccus
tomed, were upsetting Jack more than he cared to voice — as
notably my insistence, in face of his dissatisfaction, upon
remaining at home alone to do work of my own. I have come
to see it as an inevitable self -liberation after an association
that had held me like one enchanted, my faculties paralyzed
in every function except as toward him and what of assist
ance I could be to him. If, as may have been the truth, my
ego was unconsciously making effort to win to itself, it was
probably due to the impetus of the tuition Jack's superior
ego had contributed. I am only trying to clear up phe
nomena that it now seems might have been more or less por
tentous to him, and the inner meaning of which he was
bending every nerve to discover.

"For the first time in my life," he remarked one day,
"I see the real value to the human soul of the confessional."

The effect of this budding impetus in me did not ter
minate with the termination of his dominating personality.
It went marching on, evident in the most amazing ways.
Instead of still requiring, in order to go on, that superb
domination under which I had so loved to dwell, suddenly
I stood free, an ambitious, sure soul for the first time, al
most unrecognizable to friends and self, bent upon making
the best of that self and its remaining span upon earth;
this, if only to prove its appreciation of the gifts that had
been bestowed upon it, in the discharge of its tender obli
gation to the one who had gone. Life-long, inherited in
somnia fell from me, and nights were none too long to
compass the rejuvenation that was mine, and that prepared
me for each looking-forward day of the many days of hard
work which had descended upon my willing shoulders. No
task, in contemplation, discouraged — even the most exact
ing, this Biography.

It hardly matters that I am ahead of my story, inasmuch
as the events immediately preceding and succeeding Jack's
death are all of a piece.

360 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Closely following his passing "into the Silence/' on
every hand speaking evidence of his thought and achieve
ment, even lacking the maturer masterpieces we shall never
know, it came to me this way :

"It seems clear that there was no limit to his mind.
Could he have lived, that cerebration would have gone on
and on, stretching incredibly, interminably, no bounds to
its elasticity in every direction. It was enormous. "

This to George Sterling, sad beyond despair above his
friend's "holy ashes. " And he repeated after me:

' ' There was no limit to his mind. It was enormous. ' '

Jack was so tired that hot evening we arrived at Sacra
mento, September 3, that he went to bed after dinner in
stead of joining Mrs. Shepard at the Fair. We were hardly
ready to "turn in" when a general fire-alarm called us to
the hotel window, and in the direction of the Fair Grounds
we could see the flames rising.

"It's the Exhibition going up, all right," Jack said,
peering through the glare for the towers of the buildings.

"But aren't you going to dress and drive out to see if
the stock is safe — Neuadd and the rest?" I asked, surprised
at his lack of excitement.

"Oh, no — Eliza's there, or will get there, and she'll do
everything that can be done."

And surely enough, his indomitable superintendent, al
ready bound back to the hotel, had turned about and some
how bluffed her way through the cordon of police thrown
about the place, and marshaled our stockmen to convey her
precious charges to an unthreatened open space.

As before written, she and Jack had disagreed upon
the question of showing animals, at least thus early in the
establishment of his reputation as a stockbreeder. But
having seen, upon his return from the Islands, the prime
state of his beasts which she had ready for the journey, he
had relented, admitted her standpoint, and was loyally on

THE LAST SUMMER 361

hand to see them win. That they did; and no one, even
Eliza, so proud as he with his handful of gold medals and
blue and gold ribbons to prove that the Jack London Ranch
was "on the right track."

But not with his own eyes did he behold our proud grand
champions carry off their honors. Only the one day after
arrival was he able to leave the hotel, for he was obliged
to keep to bed for eight days with a session of rheumatism
in his left ankle. Fortunately the torture was intermittent,
or it would have been unbearable without a hypodermic.
As it was, the doctor had to prescribe powders for the
worst nights, or there would have been no rest for either
of us. I went out of the house but three times, and then
to buy books for the invalid, who seemed not to want me
out of his sight.

In the longer pauses between recurrences of grinding
misery that drenched the poor boy with sweat, we made
genuinely merry over games of pinochle and cribbage, and
read aloud, turn about; or he entertained callers, while I
gently rubbed the ankle by the hour. Often I could put
the sufferer to sleep by this means. Evenings, from the
window, Jack enjoyed following the starry trail of Boquel's
aeroplane flights.

For once, stung alert by pain, he was seriously anxious
about the future as regarded bodily comfort. i ' Although, if
I became permanently crippled, I'll have endless time in
bed to do all the reading I can never get around to, and be
the happiest fellow that ever came down the pike," he
grinned with native paradox. But I noticed that he did
not hasten that glad day by disobeying the physician, who
told him he was in a precarious state and must mend his
diet and work off some of his excess fat. He weighed in the
neighborhood of one hundred and ninety-four pounds.

So all toothsome fleshpots were missing from the tray,
while I was pressed to invent salad dressings and suggest
the most tempting vegetable dishes.

362 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Upon one especially precious day, when we two were
reviewing our long run of years together, calling up memo
ries sacred to our companionship, I asked Jack if he could
remember a sweet thing, the idea of which, coming from him,
had astonished me one day in Honolulu. I challenged :

"I'll wager anything you say, that you cannot repeat it
just as you said it. ' '

4 'Which sweet thing?" he came back; " There were
many, if I remember aright. I '11 subscribe to it, whatever it
was, even if I can't remember it ! Be kind, though, and give
me a tip ! "

When I had done so, he said very soberly:

' ' Yes, I not only remember and subscribe to it, but I can
repeat it word for word. I told you : If I should go into the
dark, and wake again — which I do not for a moment expect
to do — but if I should open my eyes again, yours would be

the first face I should want them to rest upon ! And I

mean it, Mate Woman. I surrender to you, you are the

only one. Ask me for something that I can do for

you!"

I have no personal evidence that Jack did not die a firm
unbeliever in any hereafter — materialist monist to the end.
In a story, "The Eternity of Forms," included in "The
Turtles of Tasman" collection, he has given his lifelong
confession of faith, "simple, brief, unanswerable":

* ' I assert, with Hobbes, that it is impossible to separate thought
from matter that thinks. I assert, with Bacon, that all human un
derstanding arises from the world of sensations. I assert, with
Locke, that all human ideas are due to the functions of the senses.
I assert, with Kant, the mechanical origin of the universe, and that
creation is a natural and historical process. I assert, with Laplace,
that there is no need of the hypothesis of a creator. And, finally,
I assert, because of all the foregoing, that form is ephemeral.
Form passes. Therefore we pass."

Two years before his death, he had more briefly stated
his old position in a letter to a young socialist in Chicago :

THE LAST SUMMER 363

"June 25, 1914.
' ' Dear Ralph Kasper :

". . . I have always inclined toward Haekel's position. In fact,
'incline' is too weak a word. I am a hopeless materialist. I see a
soul as nothing else than the sum of the activities of the organism
plus personal habits, memories, experiences, of the organism. I
believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my
death I am just as miwh obliterated as the last mosquito you or I
smashed.

"I have no patience with fly-by-night philosophers such as
Bergson. I have no patience with the metaphysical philosophers.
With them, always, the wish is parent to the thought, and their
wish is parent to their profoundest philosophical conclusions. I
join with Haeckel in being what, in lieu of any other phrase, I
am compelled to call 'a positive scientific thinker.' ';

Yet it was the same Jack London, caressing the thought
of Death at the close of "The Human Drift, " who wrote:

* * There is nothing terrible about it. With Richard Hovey, when
he faced his death, we can say: ' Behold! I have lived!' And with
another and greater one, we can lay ourselves down with a will.
The one drop of living, the one taste of being, has been good ; and
perhaps our greatest achievement will be that we dreamed im
mortality, even though we failed to realize it. ' '

Jack's sister thinks he was on the way, those last
weeks, to modify his uncompromising attitude. At least,
she considers, judging from things said and unsaid in their
closer moments, that he was shaken in his certitudes about a
number of subjects. He had always smiled or good-na
turedly scoffed at her telepathic " hunches, " as he termed
them; but himself underwent a puzzling experience. Mid
most of his forenoon work, all at once he obeyed a call that
his mortal ears had not heard, and discovered himself stand
ing by the window straining his eyes toward Eliza 's cottage,
on a slight eminence several hundred yards away. Every
thing looked as usual in the serene prospect, and he came to
himself with a laugh, turned to watch the big Shire mares

364 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

hauling his prided manure-spreader, and returned to the
interrupted manuscript. But he continued uneasy. Odd
it seems to me that Jack did not tell me of the incident ; for
later in the day Eliza reported that the husband of her new
cook had arrived unheralded and with a gun threatened her
self, who had been totally ignorant of her cook's marriage
status, for keeping his wife away from him.

I repeat that I have no evidence at first hand that there
was any radical change in Jack's method of thinking. He
only showed an intensification of his old instinct for the * ' in
exorable logic of the shadowland of the unconscious." What
he did say to me, and more than once, was the old: "If you
should ever go 'soft,' I'd never forgive you!"

It was not until after the Fair had closed and his sister
gone home, that Jack was fit to make the journey by auto
mobile. About sunset we had a breakdown, and I remem
ber him hobbling about a little village while the repairing
went forward, and halting to watch some small boys spin
ning tops.

"But don't you do this, and this?" he said, all interest
in the new generation, taking the toy from an urchin, and
trying to resurrect his own cunning. No, they couldn't spin
it his way — had never seen it done, in fact ; nor could they,
as did he, make it spin on the vertical trunk of a tree.
Suddenly one of the lads sprang away to the side of the road
and glibly named the make of an approaching car while the
headlights were still distant.

"Well, I'll be " Jack left it becomingly unsaid.

' ' How did you know what was the name of that machine ? ' '

' i Know its engines, of course — I can tell most of 'em a
long way off, ' ' the boy bragged, nicely even with his inter
locutor for superior skill in the top-game.

' * See, Mate, ' ' Jack lit a cigarette and contemplated the
group, " I 'm getting old. I 'm out of touch with the younger
generation. All they know is gasolene — but I will say they
know it pretty thoroughly!"

THE LAST SUMMEB 365

He was very quiet the rest of the ride, and I recall a
curious misapprehension displayed by him as we made
ready to leave the town of Napa in a moonlight haze. Though
we had often visited here, this time we differed as to an
avenue that led into the twenty-mile road to Glen Ellen.
Jack's sense of locality was usually faultless, mine far
from being so. But on that night I was so positive that
finally he relapsed into silence, sending forward the parting
shot:

' ' Very well — have your way ; but you '11 soon find you are
entirely off the route."

It happened otherwise; but I made no comment as the
dim moonlit leagues were left behind. And then I became
conscious of a pressure as Jack's hand clasped my shoulder,
and over it came the love-husky, golden whisper I knew of
his most humble and generous moments :

' ' I love you to death, my dear. ' '

A return hand-caress, and "I know you do," closed the
incident, and no reference to it was ever necessary.

To the tune of a merry household, after finishing "Like
Argus of the Ancient Times" Jack went at a fantastic,
whimsical tramp study entitled "The Princess," last of the
"On the Makaloa Mat" cluster. The denouement is
founded upon an after-dinner story once told at our table
by a Bohemian clubman, an inimitable raconteur. Jack
seemed to enjoy making this tale, and could hardly wait
each day to catch me with his "Come on and see how it
goes!" The accomplished ease of his method seemed only
to increase; too much, some friends and critics thought.
Yet, reading over his last stories, with their sure technique
and character-drawing, profound thinking in the processes
of the human soul, I cannot consider that he had fallen off.

How gay were host and guest, outside of what might be
called natural sports such as swimming, and swimming the
horses, "hiking," boating, riding, and the like, may be

366 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

judged by a reckless prank that broke up one noonday meal.
I do not remember how it started, nor whose was the sug
gestion, but some one was dared to swallow, alive and whole,
the tiny goldfish that swam among plants in a low cut-
glass bowl on the long table. In the babble among the
horrified girls, Jack shouted:

" We'll play a hand at poker for it, and the fellow who
loses must not only swallow the fish, but keep it down for
ten minutes, no matter what is said to him."

Remonstrance was in vain — the trio, Jack, Finn Frolich,
and Joe Mather, were "on their way." Joe, slender, fas
tidious, was " stuck, " and exhibited, in paying the forfeit,
the keenest courage I ever have witnessed.

"Gee," gasped the chesty Frolich, "I couldn't have got
it down!"

"I'd have died if I'd had to do it!" Jack said in awe
struck admiration when confronted by the tragic face of
the man who had "put away" the scaly morsel. And "I
never can feel quite the same toward you again," Joe's
young wife murmured betwixt laugh and sob.

' ' That was an awful thing to allow, ' ' afterward I chided
Jack.

"It was a wild thing," he giggled concurrence, "but
think of the fun!"

"How about the fish?"

"Now you're saying something," he admitted. "Just
the same, it was quicker ' curtains' for the fish than your fish
in the garden pool get, slowly smothering in the gullets of
the water-snakes! And how about live oysters, now, my

dear . . . think, think! Anyway, I'd rather have been

the fish than Joe ! " he grimaced in conclusion.

When, on October 2, "The Water Baby" was sent off to
The Cosmopolitan, Jack went at his notes for a new novel,
"Cherry," which was left less than half completed. This
romance is laid in Hawaii. The heroine, Cherry, is a Japan-

THE LAST SUMMER 367

ese girl, mysteriously wrecked in the Islands when a baby,
and evidently, by the trappings and the dead servitors on
the abandoned sampan, infant of high degree. She is
adopted and given every cultural advantage by a wealthy
white couple who were childless. The motif of the work is a
racial one, the climax depending upon Cherry's choice of a
husband among the many, of various nationalities, who sue
for the hand of this tantalizing oriental maid whose brain
has divined her situation in every connotation. There
are enough notes to guide a reader to the conclusion; but
up to the end of the year 1921, I have not matured my
plans for this book and that other incomplete manuscript,
"The Assassination Bureau."

Evenings were spent in cards, or games like "packing
peanuts, ' ' in which Jack nearly died of mirth. Or he would
be inclined to read aloud, poetry, or perhaps his own stories.
And I know there were listeners, captured and enchained by
his charm, in whose ears still rings his rich and solemn voice
in the stately numbers of Ecclesiastes. He had read from
this favorite several times to certain friends in Honolulu,
and now recurred to it with increasing appreciation. At
these times Jack was extremely handsome, with something
hard to describe — a fine nobility in expression and pose, but
something also of the unconscious hauteur of isolation, of
the aristocrat, of the imperator.

One little party that was with us for a day or two con
sisted of my uncle, Harley R. Wiley, of the University of
California faculty, who had brought up his long poem "Dust
and Flame ' ' to read to us ; and Blanche Partington, whose
contribution, in this instance, beside her own ever-welcome
personaliy, was the young Irish revolutionist's, Kathleen
O'Brennan, whom she wanted to see lock horns with Jack
London. She was not disappointed. The pair went into the
arena in fine form, while the rest of us sat panting with emo
tions that ranged from serious to comic. "Never in my

368 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

life, ' ' Blanche revives the occasion, * ' did I hear such a racial
dressing-down as Jack gave Ireland !"

More often than he went himself, Jack sent me over
the trails with parties, and never did we twain go on any
of the long rides once so reveled in. When guests were
absent, the ranch claimed all his daylight recreation hours,
and he forewent the Outlaw, and Sonoma Maid, and Hilo,
preferring Prince, the " Love-Horse " of our fore-in-hand,
on whom leisurely he explored the uplands, testing with
eye and hand for soils he ached to "put to work/* This
was not sufficient exercise for me, and I rode my colts
longer distances, usually hunting for Jack in the woods,
when we would descend together. Many was the day he
said, though uncomplainingly :

"I got in a lot of reading last night, but not much
sleep. I '11 nap this afternoon. ' '

But it was seldom, homing alone from a canter, that I
failed to see his tumbled handful of curls bobbing out of
the door to meet me.

"You'll never know," he said again and again, "how I
love to hear your horse galloping toward me. I wouldn't
miss being here to see you come in for anything!"

I was far from easy about him. There was a twilight
stealing over our lives — was it to be ever this way, that I
rode solitary while he must sleep ? Whither were we trend
ing?

"Near the end," an author has told me, "he wrote me
about my book, and in that letter he complained of being ill.
Said he had been down with rheumatism . . . complained
of having had a severe time of it. Complaint of any kind
from him seemed unusual. My impression was that he was
not himself when he wrote this way. It came stealing over
me that his work was nearly done. ' '

Jack had expected to go east in the early part of October,
but the water-suit intervened. He was supposed to be away,
however, and I am always grateful to fate that we had those

JACK LONDON TWO WEEKS BEFORE HIS DEATH

THE LAST SUMMER 369

last few weeks uninterrupted save by a few loved ones. To
one, my cousin Beth, he gave a book in which the inscription
verified my fear in that he was going too fast, his mind in
creasing upon itself with an insupportable rapidity, wave
upon wave, factors climbing upon the backs of factors, the
thousand-thousand connotations that might have suggested
the loom of madness to any who could not know his natural
scope. But to me it represented an enormous sanity, a huge,
normal functioning, only a madness if to be super-sane is
to be mad; and the only question was, how long could a
man live in so unchecked a mind-functioning, while neglect
ing his body!

" It is a long time,'* he complained in the inscription to
Beth above referred to, " since I've seen you to renew ac
quaintance with you. When you were here, the world was
here, and the world was very much and too much with
me. Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it con
tinually turn over! Where is the reverse gear!"

Evening after evening he read aloud from Percy's
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," and reread certain
of these to Beth and to his two "saints," my sister Emma
Growall, and my uncle's wife, Villa Wiley. Two large vol
umes we went through, and the third and last to Page 288.
The next selection is "St. George for England," and Jack's
book-mark, the ubiquitous safety-match, still rests between
the leaves. Dryden's " Jealousie Tyrant of the Mind" was
an especial treasure to us. I shall hear until I die Jack's
voice of the lover in "The Nut-Browne Mayd," which
he never tired of repeating, and which I called for over
and over, if only for the spell of the "viols" in his
throat, and to see, under the long curl of lashes, the eyes he
raised to mine at the verse-ends :

"I love but you alone."

He fastened upon the sweet old-English spelling of
Darling — "Dearling" — and thenceforward used it exclu
sively when addressing me, his voice like a prayer.

370 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Interspersed with these poems we also read the Beau
mont and Fletcher Elizabethan plays, the power and beauty
of some of these affecting Jack profoundly.

He frequently asked me to play or sing for him, and was
strangely touched by a song-relic of my girlhood, "Becom-
pense, ' ' in which occur the lines :

"And at the last, I found that she

Was more than all the world to me."

Handel's " Largo," Wagner's "Pilgrim's Chorus," and
the trio of funeral marches, favorites of all his adult life,
were resurrected and rendered him as much pleasure as
ever. Whenever he went to Oakland, he put in an hour
or so in some music store, after which there was sure
to arrive in Glen Ellen a box of phonograph records,
most of them operatic. Many he retained, and while we
had supper at a card-table on my glass porch, it was the
duty of Sekiiie or the house-boy to run off a succession of
disks laid out by Jack. In line with tracing back into race-
consciousness, he showed increasing preference for folk
songs, and the American negro melodies. After supper he
would throw himself on the couch by my side, and have
these reeled off, while he dreamed beyond all following
of the significance of these human cries for rest.

"It's always been that way," he would reflect. "Man
kind has always bowed under -jome galling yoke, physical or
mental, that has made it supplicate for rest, to escape
'the dreary agitation of the dust.' Can't you hear it,
beating down the ages — listen to that — play it over, Sera,
so Mrs. London can hear it again."

Sometimes he was very calm, and evenings were of our
sweetest, he reading aloud or talking, I embroidering the
beloved "L" upon absurd little "guest-towels" for the
Wolf House that was soon to be rebuilt. His dislike to see
me sew had been modified these many years. My philoso-

THE LAST SUMMER 371

phy upon needlework had so pleased him that he incorpo
rated it in "The Little Lady of the Big House. "

Again, over-intense, on hair-trigger to snap up any
word as a pretext to start an argument, if he caught me
trying to placate or turn him into smoother channels he flew
into a mental fury, at times hot, at others deadly cool.
Sometimes, as before noted, I let him wear himself out.
And when, as might happen, he was soon over the mood,
resting in my embrace he would tell me what it meant to
unburden to me in any way at any time.

On October 22, precisely a month before Jack went out,
Neuadd Hillside, the "Great Gentleman,'* our incompar
able Shire Horse, died overnight while we slept. Rupture,
they pronounced it, and veterinaries were summoned from
all quarters.

It was a heavy blow to Jack. Aside from the mone
tary loss this was an incalculable set-back in his far-seeing
plans, already under way, for breeding and in-breeding.
I learned of the event when at nine of the morning I found
Jack still in bed, lying quite idle. I had not time to ask the
reason for his stricken face when he said, reaching out to
me:

* ( Come here and sit beside me. I have bad news for you
— your Great Gentleman is gone."

' ' What ? Who f — what do you mean t ' '

"Good old Neuadd died last night."

. . . And a little later: "I'm not ashamed, Mate-
Woman, " looking at me like a lost child through his man's
tears. He followed me around much that day, telling more
than I had ever dreamed of what the glorious animal had
meant to him.

"I tell you, Mrs. London," said Hazen Cowan, our cow
boy, who had had the care of the stallion, "I hadn't cried
since the last time my mother spanked me, until Neuadd fell
down. He wouldn't lie down till he was dead, but stood
there shaking all over." Hazen pulled a freckled hand

372 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

across his hazel, black-lashed eyes: "I'd really slept with
him, lived with him, for months, you know. "

" Cherry'' was laid aside, and Jack went to making notes
for a novel upon the horse. "You, too, make me some mem
ory-pictures of him," he begged. He now believed that he
had been right in the first place about "show-condition" for
live stock, and that had Neuadd been maintained in proper
working-flesh, he would have been saved to the farm.

He did not begin that book. After making a sufficient
sketch to fix his motif, he returned to what was already
begun — how vain the endeavor we were not then to know.
But the death of the "chief of the herd" weighed more than
we shall ever realize. At times he gave way to a listless-
ness I had never before seen in him.

Next, the gentle Prince developed what eventually
proved an incurable rheumatism, and could not be used.
One day his master charged: "If anything should happen
to me, and Prince's case become hopeless, don't ever let him
go off the ranch." So the "Love-Horse" came to sleep
with Neuadd, Sonoma Maid and Hilda, in a wooded ravine
on the "Beauty Ranch." The only one remaining of our
joyous coaching team is the indefatigable Outlaw, Gert, who
lives and moves and delivers the finest of colts each and
every renascent springtime.

When, in mid-October, the duck-hunting season opened,
Jack flung caution to the four winds and with gusto con
sumed two large birds, canvasback or mallard, each day. An
Oakland market kept him supplied. Poisoned as he already
was with uremia, this richest of diets was nothing less than
suicidal, and put him out of the world of human affairs
in less than six weeks. "Oh, I love them so," was his in
corrigible waive of my remonstrance. "I've been good as
gold ever since Sacramento, you've seen; and now it won't
hurt me to fall off my diet. Don't forget I'm naturally a
meat-eater!"

The last guest Jack ever entertained, and who left

THE LAST SUMMER 373

three days before lie died, was a frail little stranger who
came to ask if he would accept a joint guardianship of her
children. "Sure!" said that obliging friend of the needy.
"Put my name down with the rest!" She had studied
medicine, and writing to me later inquired if Jack was
accustomed to the amazing menu she had seen him consume
twice daily while she was with us. None but a plowman
could have survived it.

On the 28th, shaking off the dejection of the court pro
ceedings in the water-suit begun two days previously, Jack
with apparent joy read a letter from the Newspaper Enter
prise Association, of New York City, and appended is his
reply to their self-evident query :

* * Gentlemen :

". . . When I lie on the placid beach of Waikiki, in the
Hawaiian Islands, as I did last year, and a stranger introduces
himself as the person who settled the estate of Captain Keller;
and when that stranger explains that Captain Keller came to his
death by having his head chopped off and smoke-cured by the
cannibal head-hunters of the Solomon Islands in the "West South
Pacific ; and when I remember back through the several brief years,
to when Captain Keller, a youth of twenty-two and master of the
schooner Eugenie, wassailed deep with me on many a night, and
played poker to the dawn, and took hasheesh with me for the en
tertainment of the wild crew of Pennduffryn; and who, when I
was wrecked on the outer reef of Malu, on the island of Malaita,
with fifteen hundred naked bushmen head-hunters on the beach
armed with horse-pistols, Snider rifles, tomahawks, spears, war-
clubs, and bows and arrows, and with scores of war-canoes, filled
with salt-water head-hunters and man-eaters holding their place
on the fringe of the breaking surf alongside of us, only four whites
of us including my wife on board — when Captain Keller burst
through the rain-squalls to windward, in a whale-boat, with a crew
of niggers, himself rushing to our rescue, bare-footed and bare
legged, clad in loin-cloth and sixpenny undershirt, a brace of guns
strapped about his middle — I say, when I remember all this, that

374 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

adventure and romance are not dead as I lie on the placid beach
of Waikiki."

Here is a letter to his London agent, Mr. Hughes Massie,
dated November 5 :

"I have not replied by cable because of two things.

" First, I expect to be in New York sometime after the middle
of November. I should then be able to talk the matter of such an
autobiography of 50,000 words, about my writing, with my maga
zine publisher. In any such event, I would personally handle the
sale of the American first serial rights.

"Second, I am not sure about what the contemplated 50,000
words would be concerned. From reading your letter it would
seem that what is asked is how I obtained at first hand the experi
ences that are at the back of my writing. I do not see how I could
write on such a subject — at least no more than several thousand
words. My idea would be to give my writing experiences from my
first attempt at writing right on down the line to the present date,
I mean my experiences with newspaper editors, magazine editors,
book publishers, etc., etc., entering intimately into my various
books and short stories themselves, I mean in relation to the sale
of them to the purchasers.

"If you could write me a letter conveying more adequately the
subject that would be acceptable, as well as some sort of suggestions
about the rate that the Wide World Magazine would pay for the
first serial rights in Great Britain, I would be better equipped to
discuss the matter with my people when I get to New York."

"The money I get for this," he exulted, "will buy more
farm machinery, more seed to plant, and the rest!"

On the afternoon of the second court-hearing in the
riparian rights contest, Jack was threatened with a repe
tition of the severe attack he had suffered in Honolulu,
and drilled me again in the use of the hypodermic, should
the pain get beyond him. He was very wretched, but the
calculus passed without resort to the needle.

His fourth appearance in court was on November 10.
He came home looking ill, and complained of distressing

THE LAST SUMMER 375

symptoms which toward evening so strongly resembled pto
maine poisoning that finally, as the pain increased, I got him
to take an antidote, which produced the desired effect.
Very gravely I talked with him, and he owned that he was
shockingly out of condition, with an increasing tendency to
dysentery. "I've never been quite right in that respect
since my sickness and operation in Australia — and Mexico
didn't help matters any. — But don't worry, don't bother ;
I'll be all right, my dear!"

And still he made no alteration in his diet of underdone
wild fowl.

Philosophically, and helped by psychoanalysis, Jack
better and better understood and sympathized with human
frailty; but temperamentally, due largely to physical and
nervous breakdown, he became more and more intolerant
under the torment of his uncovered sensibilities. Those
last days were not the first wherein he had gone stark
against the apparent truism that any one who accepts
benefits never forgives the benefactor.

As I sit at my typewriter, I can see him, back to me,
elbows on desk, head in both hands, and hear him say, not
for the initial time :

"It's a pretty picayune world, Mate — what am I to
think? Are they all alike! Every person I've done any
thing for — and I've not been a pincher, have I? — has thrown
me down: near ones, dear ones — and the rest."

"Some of us are still standing by," I reminded him
soothingly.

"Oh, I don't mean you, of course, nor Eliza. But the
exceptions are so rare — friend and stranger alike. Run
over the list. Take that socialist woman east — I've for
gotten her name — who wrote begging me to stake her to a
small sum for a certain number of months, so she could
devote herself to writing a book. It's ages since she ac
knowledged the last check Eliza sent, and she has never
written me one line of thanks, nor even reported progress.

376 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

And she's but a sample of the whole hopeless, helpless mess !
And take cases nearer home. The hand I feed smites. It's
only the ones I have helped. What am I to conclude ?" he
finished, swallowed in gloom, suffering damnably.

"But even so," I argued, trying to offset the somber
discord induced by those raw sensibilities that made him
pierce too easily through even the unconscious petty shams
of civilization — ' ' even so, it is nothing new to you ; do not
forget that it has always been that way. Do not think you
are the only one who suffers from this lamentable tendency
of the human. Your kind has plenty of company in the
world. No man who ever made money and played Santa
Glaus to many, has escaped your fate. So don't isolate
yourself as a martyr. Be a real philosopher, and ' forget
it.' " Then in a vain attempt to sting him out of his
lethargy to a normal sense of values, I dared: "Be care
ful, or you'll find yourself nursing a persecution mania!'!

But the only reaction to this last bolt was a rather spirit
less challenge to show him where he was wrong in his facts.

Although Judge Edgar Zook urged the plaintiffs to
allow him to apportion the water, which he was empowered
to do, their lawyer declined to consider this. "We stand
or fall, ' ' was his ultimatum. On November 14, the injunc
tion was dissolved. Jack, desiring in neighborly manner
to convince the plaintiffs of the veracity of claims upon
which his testimony had been based, drove around inviting
one and all to break bread with us at noon on Friday the
17th, and accompany him on a little tour of inspection.
Nearly all accepted, and with one or two exceptions it was
their last meeting with the big neighbor whose visions for
agricultural welfare were for the most part incomprehen
sible to them. Jack appeared very bright during the meal,
and no business was talked until its conclusion. But when
we started out of doors, he became all earnest enthusiasm
to persuade his opponents to the worth of his moral as well

THE LAST SUMMER 377

as legal rights in the matter at issue. One of them was

heard to sigh :

"We should never have gone into this fight with you!"
And another : " What a pity we didn't get togelher with

you in the first place and thrash out this matter instead

of rushing into court with it ! ' '

Saturday I myself went to bed. I cannot, to this day,
name my illness ; but looking back it seems that I was on
the verge of a nerve-collapse- I must have been laboring
under too great anxiety. The Thursday before1, when
Ernest Hopkins and two camera men had been photo
graphing Jack both for ' ' movies ' ' and * ' stills, ' ' I had sud
denly, in one or two of the poses, noticed something in
Jack's face, or an accession of something more than dimly
felt of late, that struck fear into me. It might be described
as a deadness — or an absence of life; something that no
face, upon an upright figure, should be. Others were full
of vivacity, with all that Jack could command of charm and
aliveness — sitting with his rifle, laughing from the high
seat of the water cart, or driving two monster Shire mares
in the manure-spreader. How eloquent, like a message of
the year's increase, that oval ring of fertilizer lay for
weeks upon his field until erased by the winter rains ! How
eloquent was the whole fruitful prospect, when he lay, in
his own White Silence, in the midst of the fair land of his
devising! To me, then, wandering among his kindly herds,
in the effort to orient myself with a new universe, came the
thought that he, our Jack, was the most eloquent dead man
in all the world. That small, potent hand had written a
deathless scroll upon the hills, and he seemed to live and
speak and move at one with the growth he had encouraged
in the pregnant dust of his Sweet Land. One could not
quit and lie down in the face of such vital challenge to make
short shrift of tears and rise to carry his banner as long as
fate should be generous enough to let one work.

378 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

When on a day I gallop along the blossoming ways to
Jack's mountain meadows, missing my Strong Traveler, it
takes little effort still to hear his blithe, companionable
"Toot! Toot!" I would feel no startlement did he emerge,
reining the Outlaw from the shadows of the trees, laughing
from under the cowboy hat.

He had been radiant in his hope that had no horizon. "I
want to live a hundred years!" was his lusty slogan, re
peated within a fortnight of his death. * ' See the dozens of
boxes of notes filed away? Why, writers I know are look
ing about for plots, and I've enough here to keep me busy
with twice a hundred novels ! ' '

It was the expression of just such exuberance that Jack
felt in this stanza of John G. Neihardt 's :

Let me live out my years in heat of blood !

Let me lie drunken with the dreamer 's wine !
Let me Hot see this soul-house built of mud

Go toppling to the dust — a vacant shrine !

When he was gone, I smiled with appreciation of an
enthusiastic, but uninformed, reviewer who, despite Jack's
fifty-odd books written within seventeen years, credited him
with more than double that number, "to say nothing of
other forms of literature."

And there was also a letter that pleased me, written on
November 20, and never read by Jack :

"I have just seen your picture, driving two huge draft-horses to
a manure-spreader. This is the picture of a man with a wagon-
load of fertilizer. He is going to spread it over an acre of ground
and make it fertile. In reality the man has an inexhaustible supply
of mental pabulum which he spreads over the whole world, the
dark spots are made lighter, the sloughs of despond are drained
and made to blossom ... the weary and heavy laden are lifted
up. ... In reality you are subsoil-plowing the world, preparing
it for the seeds of Universal Brotherhood, the while you dream
dreams. ' '

THE LAST SUMMER 379

It would not be hard to imagine him a happy ghost re
visiting his beloved lands or the running tides of San Fran
cisco Bay, irresistibly drawn back to

". . . The horses in the wagons with their kind long faces,
And little boats that climb upon the waves. "

I could but think, viewing the excellence he left be
hind, the purity of his purpose, the way he went straight to
his goal, that he made a shining exception to the rule that

"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones. "

I was sad when, on Saturday the nineteenth, our tenth
wedding anniversary, I was unable to join Jack and a quaint
woman guest at dinner. Jack brought her in to meet me,
and later, having settled her somewhere with a book, re
turned to stroke my throbbing head. I remember remind
ing him of the fact that I was born and married in the
same month, and that eight days hence, the twenty-seventh,
would be my birthday. How little I imagined that there
would intervene the date of my widowhood ! Yet doom was
in the air. Subtly I felt its clutch, and this was all my
malady.

Jack wrote with unabated industry on Monday morning,
and in the afternoon he came and coaxed me in a cheery and
loving way to pull myself together and accompany him up-
mountain. He wanted to see again a piece of land that
adjoined the ranch, which he recalled as being well watered
by springs.

"I may buy it," he said. "I could develop the springs,
and that would mean bigger crops, bigger and better cattle
and horses, life, more life, Mate-Woman ! Oh, it 's big, and
I have so many plans and so much to do ! Come on up with

me."

It hurt to refuse, but I felt too weak and tired to face
the long ride; so he went out alone, looking unusually
disappointed. Yet what strength was mine but half a hun-

380 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

dred hours later to meet the worst and not fail — so strange
ly are we constituted.

Upon his return he came breaking through the house
with his merriest step to tell me every detail of his explora
tion.

"I found the trail without any trouble/' he told me,
"and when I came to the field I had in mind, there was a
young farmer plowing. We talked quite a while, and I got
off old Fritz to handle the soil myself. I found it of very
good quality. It ran through my fingers, so friable, you
know. IVe discovered who owns it, and I'm going to take
up the matter as soon as I can land the prospect of some
money in New York. Maybe that autobiographical stuff
will pay for it. ' ' Then further : " I 'm planning to go on the
twenty-ninth. And you're still not coming with me?" he
finished wistfully. Then he resumed the tale of his projects
for increasing the abundance upon his acres.

There followed a wakeful night for Jack, and he rose
very late, frankly blue, and complaining of fatigue. The
dysentery was so much worse that I protested at his taking
no measures to check an alarming condition. He worked
but a short time, and the few pages of manuscript were the
last he ever set hand to. The several letters he dictated to
the machine were transcribed afterward by his secretary.
The very last letter he ever talked into the horn was the
following :

1 'Editor Every Week,
1 ' My dear sir :

" Curses on you, 'Every Week'! You keep a busy man busy
over-time trying to get rid of you while unable to tear himself away.
I wish the man who writes the captions for your photographs had
never been born. I just can't refrain from reading every word
he writes.

11 And the rest of your staff bothers me the same way.
" Hereby registering my complaint,

"Sincerely yours,

"Jack London. "

THE LAST SUMMEE 381

The last literary notes he ever penciled, I take from his
bed-side tablet:

* * Socialist autobiography.

" Martin Eden and Sea Wolf, attacks on Nietzeschean
philosophy, which even the socialists missed the point of."

Another page:

"In late autumn of 1916, when Adamson Bill (8
hrs. for Kailroad Brotherhoods) rushed at the last tick of
the sixtieth second of the twelfth hour, through Congress
and Senate and signed by President Wilson, agreed with
my forecast of favored unions in Iron Heel."

"Novel.

"Historical novel of 80,000 words — love — hate — primi-
tiveness. Discovery of America by the Northmen — see my
book on same, also see Maurice Hewlett's 'Frey and his
Wife/ Get in interpretation of the genesis of their myths,
etc., from their own unconsciousness. "

He did not go out all day, and slept in the afternoon,
rousing himself with an effort. Eliza came over to talk
ranch business, and they were still at it when the first and
then the second gong sounded for our supper. Having
shaken off the half-stupor in which he had awakened, he
had become very excited outlining his immediate intention
to erect on the ranch a general store, a school, and a post-
office. I heard him wind up :

"There are enough children on the ranch to open a
school. The ranch people can have their homes here, trade
here at better prices, be born here, grown up here, get their
schooling here, and if they die they can be buried on the
Little Hill, where the two Grcenlaw children's graves are.
. . . No, I haven 't in mind a community in the usual sense

382 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

of a reform colony. I only look forward to making the
place self-sustaining for every soul upon it."

Five days after that utterance, Jack London's own ashes
were laid there on the whispering ridge.

Eliza told me later that in those days she worried about
the over-working of Jack's brain. As far as possible she met
him, yet wondered how he expected her to put into prompt
execution the enormous tasks he prepared. A lesser man, in
the throes of the toxemia that was destroying him, would
have evinced a lesser "mania." Jack's mental vigor was
spent logically along the lines of his ambition.

^s

Even with modern familiarity with body chemistry,
scientists are not able to determine with exactitude the
nature of the toxins that produce uremia. "A gastro
intestinal type of uremia," the doctors pronounced Jack's
disorder. The symptoms had been present for a long time
— stomachic disturbances, insomnia, sporadic melancholia,
dysentery, rheumatic edema in ankles, and dull headaches
alternating with the speeding up of his mental enginery.
Convulsions were absent, and the only coma was that in
which he breathed his last.

When Jack at length parted from Eliza that night of
the twenty-first, he brought with him into the warm and
cozy veranda the sweeping current of his fervor, and con
tinued talking in the same vein. But I saw that he was
strung to a breaking pitch of excitement.

"Your duck was perfection half an hour ago," I said,
"but I'm afraid it is far from that by now."

But he was not interested in ducks, and spoke much more
than he ate, roving into a future heydey of the ranch. I
distinctly recall one part of his conversation, and am again
made glad for his clean soul:

' ' There 's a big slump coming in real estate, country, not
city. Recollect that man who came the other day to interest
me in some of the land among the little hills north of us?

THE LAST SUMMER 383

I didn't like the looks of his speculation. But if I cared to
play the dirty business game, I could buy in largely when
the slump comes, cut up the property and later on sell, as
that man expects to do, to poor people at big profit. But I
ion 't care to make money that way, Mate- Woman, ' ' he broke
off earnestly. "My hands are pretty clean, aren't they?"

I could thankfully respond to that. His business was
clean: his vocation, the making of books; his avocation,
agriculture.

He did not ask for music, nor did he frolic with the fox
terrier, Possum, as he had done so much of late, testing that
keen little brain and great heart in a hundred ways. In
half an hour, Jack's exuberance had worn out; and with an
apprehension to which I had been no stranger of late,
I saw that he was getting argumentative, as if looking for
trouble lest he fall into melancholy. He picked up two
wooden box-trays of reading matter that he had brought
with him, and lifted them to the table on which stood his
almost untasted supper.

"Look," he said, his voice low and lifeless, "see what
I've got to read to-night."

"But you don't have to do it, mate," I said, trying to
stir his spirit. "Always remember that you make all this
work and overwork for yourself, and it must be because you
choose to do it rather than to rest. My ancient argument,
you know ! ' *

There followed a colloquy upon relative values, and then
he stood up abruptly, came around the small table, and flung
himself on the couch into my arms.

"Mate-Woman, Mate-Woman, you're all I've got, the
last straw for me to cling to, my last bribe for living. You
know. I have told you before. You must understand. If
you don't understand, I'm lost. You're all I've got."

" I do understand, ' ' I cried. ' ' I understand that there 's
too much for you to do, and that you're straining too hard
to get it done. Are you so bound on the wheel that you

384 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

cannot ease up a little, both working and thinking? You
are going too fast. You are too aware. And you are ill.
Something will snap if you don't pull up. You are tired,
perilously tired, tired almost to death. What shall we do?
We can't go on this way!"

The green shade was well down over his face, and I
could not see his eyes. But the corners of his mouth
drooped pathetically. Poor lad, my poor boy — he was, in
deed, tired to death.

We lay there for perhaps an hour, he resting, sometimes
sighing, saying little except by an exchange of sympathetic
pressures which were our wont. How thankfully I remem
ber an old vow that never, under any provocation, would I
ignore caress of his! A few sentences of that Hour are
too sacred and too personal to be repeated, and yet they
were the frequent expressions of our daily round — in the
last analysis they were an expression of the ever-narrow
ing values of life, working the changes upon his " bribe
for living."

All at once, turning slightly, he put his arms around my
neck.

"Pm so worn for lack of sleep. I'm going to turn in."
Eising, he gave voice to that which so startled me.

" Thank God, you're not afraid of anything!"

Never shall I know why it came from him unless it
was he knew the unthinkable was upon him, that I would
very shortly lose his dear comradeship, and felt that I
would be gallant to cope with that disaster.

When in the days to follow Jack's holographic will was
read, first in the family circle, next by Judge T. C. Denny,
in court, and tacit responsibilities were made known, I could
not help reverting to that fervent exclamation. Or was it
an entreaty, a supplication? If a prayer, at least he had
answered it by his own passive action in neglecting, during
the half-decade the Will had lain in deposit, to alter a line
of it. In effect it is a love letter, written by a wise man who

THE LAST SUMMER 385

knew our metal, and he named Eliza Shepard and my
cousin Willard L. Growall, as executors. But Jack gave
loophole for discontent and criticism in that, beyond trifling
provision for various beneficiaries, he stipulated:

" Whatever additional may be given them shall be a
benefaction and a kindness from Charmian K. London and
shall arise out of Charmian K. London's goodness and de
sire. ' '

Having not forfeited his trust, I am proud to append
his closing paragraph :

' ' The reason that I give all my estate to Charmian K. London,
with exceptions noted, is as follows : Charmian K. London, by her
personal fortune, and, far more, by her personal aid to me in my
literary work, and still vastly far more, by the love, and comfort,
and joy, and happiness she has given me, is the only person in this
world who has any claim or merit earned upon my estate. This
merit and claim she has absolutely earned, and I hereby earnestly,
sincerely, and gratefully accord it."

After he had gone to his room, I thought to cool my
distressed head by a stroll in the blue starlight. The burden
of my thought was that matters could not go on in this way,
that I must make an effort to shake Jack into recognizing
that he would have to change his physical habits.

When I reentered the house at about nine, it was on
tiptoe. Jack's light was burning. Peeping across from
my own quarters, I saw that his head had fallen upon his
chest, the eyeshade down. As I looked, he made a slight
movement, as if settling to sleep; and knowing his sore
need of repose, I did not venture a chance of disturbing
his first slumber. The last work in which he read that
night, was a small, rusty, calf volume, " Around Cape Horn,
Maine to California in 1852, Ship James W. Paige. My
self half-exhausted from emotion and lack of rest, I went to
bed, read a few moments in "The Wayside Lute," by
Lizette Woodworth Reese, and fell asleep for the first
unbroken eight hours I had known in weeks — thereby shat-

386 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

tering any latent faith I may ever have entertained in the
sweet code of telepathy between those close in sympathy.
As if to me a prophesy, one of the poems on which I
went to sleep was this :

"House, how still you are;
Hearth, how cold !
He was vital as a star,
As the April mold.
Friend and singer, lad and knight,

Very dear ;

Hearts, how bare the dark, the light,
Since he is not here!"

But the last lines I scanned, and which keep impinging
now upon memory, were these :

" Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep ;
Homer his sight, David his little lad ! ' '

When, at ten minutes past eight the next morning, my
eyes opened upon Eliza standing by my bed, with Sekine,
our Japanese boy, in the background, I said, "Yes, what is
it?" knowing well that only the gravest urgency brought
them there. And just as quietly Eliza replied :

" Sekine could not wake Jack, so came right to me. I
think you'd better come in and see what you can do."

The stertorous respiration could be heard before we en
tered the sleeping-porch. Jack, unconscious, was doubled
down sidewise, showing plain symptoms of poisoning. By
means of strong coffee we had succeeded in producing some
reaction before the doctors arrived and the real battle for
Jack's life began, but not at any time did we succeed in
coaxing the limp form to any effort. The physicians first
summoned were A. M. Thompson and W. B. Hayes of
Sonoma; followed by J. Wilson Shiels from San Francisco,
and Jack's own surgeon, W. S. Porter. It was only by hold
ing him up, one on a side, that Jack could be kept in a sitting

THE LAST SUMMER 387

posture on the edge of the bed ; and when ranchmen, waiting
all day at call, had him on his feet, equilibrium of the heavy
and nerveless figure was maintained only by sheer strength
of his supporters. Body and will could not cooperate, and
but several times, in the middle of the day, was there a
flicker of intelligence. Every legitimate kind of shock was
resorted to. Physically he was for the most part beyond ef
fort, but half-conscious response was obtained when we
shouted alarming tidings across the abysm of coma :

1 ' Man, man, wake up ! The dam has burst ! Wake, man,
wake !" This caused a shudder in the congested, discolored
countenance, the head jerked, the fixed and awful eyes made
a superhuman effort to focus. There was a glimmer of con
sciousness, evanescent as the dying light along the wires in
an electric bulb that has been snapped off. The awareness
faded, faded. But oh, the pang of happiness even this brief
acknowledgment lent us who stood by, together or by turn,
in the struggle of those midday hours !

When the news of harm to his dam had been reiterated
to the point of intolerable agony of rousing from so deadly
lethargy, we were rewarded by observing that he protested,
with the leaden vigor of one half-thralled in nightmare, by
slowly beating the mattress with a loosely-clenched right
fist. The left was never raised. Whereupon shaking and
shouting were resumed, with a like outcome. Although
on verge of tears of pure joy at this encouragement, I
could but note, with a sickening sense of futility, that body
and will were at sharp variance — the closer we forced
cognition of our intent to resuscitate, the more rational
became the opposition. He was, I see it, setting the last
fleeting effort of his life, of his reasoned will, against
rehabilitation of that life and will.

Then, realizing this in spirit, I desisted, inwardly at
least, to fight, to hope. One thing, however, I must do:
establish one last mental contact, to serve me all the de
prived years that should befall.

388 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

"Let me try something/' I said, and they set him up
right upon the edge of the bed, his helpless feet upon the
fur rug.

Face to face, seizing him firmly by the shoulders, I shook
him, not roughly, but decisively, and repeated :

"Mate! mate! You must come back! Mate! You've
got to come back! To me! Mate! Mdte!"

He came back. Of course he came back. Slowly, as
something rising from the unfathomable well of eternity,
full knowledge brimmed into those eyes that drew to mine in
a conscious regard, and the mouth smiled, a fleeting, writhen
smile. It seemed as if my unbodied soul went out to meet
his in that instant. Instant it was, ineffable, brief. But
it contained as great, as glorious, a meeting of two as ever
took place upon this planet. Yet it was not enough. Again
I sent out the call to him upon the brink — and again the
smile. Was it of hail and faiewell to life as he had known
it? Or of love, and the bliss of one perfect moment of
understanding? Or was it of victory, that he, by lack of
resistance, had beaten us all out, and thus invited ' ' the ulti
mate nothingness," his passing behind the curtains into
"The darkness that rounds the end of life"? Perhaps
there was, too, upon the lips that smiled awry and vainly
strove to speak, the twist of contempt for the dissolution
that was upon him. What would we not give to know
those words he could not frame!

What I love to believe, when all else is said, is that he,
who gave life and death an equal supremacy in his affection,
was redeeming a promise made so long ago that it is woven
into the fabric of all memories of him.

1 ' Death is sweet. Death is rest. Think of it ! — to rest for
ever! I promise you that whensoever and wheresoever
Death comes to meet me, I shall greet Death with a smile. ' '

How the great ones have walked arm-in-arm with Death !
Thus Eobert Louis Stevenson to the beloved Assassin :

THE LAST SUMMER 389

"I have been waiting for you these many years. Give
me your hand, and welcome."

Where was he, our Jack, all that day we warred with
his fate? What was it he so hated to forswear in order to
answer our importunity? Judging reasonably enough by
the dreams of his latter years, I hazarded that he was wan
dering purposefully in that same land of green fields, intent,
watchful, happy. It had been the same with his father
during a longer period of alternate unconscious periods —
the long life-desire fulfilled. This, oh, surely, is what we
tortured the son from! — But with the last breath which
left his body — what of the bright dream f When the splen
did head, no longer instinct with resolution, ceased from
its cerebration, hard it was to agree with that same cere
bration that the Thing that Thinks is one with the Thing
that Dies ! How I should love to believe that he, liberated,
opened eyes upon the range of illimitable possibilities that
had hitherto been bounded by failing mortality. Yet who
am I to invoke for him, who declared for perfect rest,
otherwise than Ambrose Bieree's wish to a friend:

" Light lie the earth upon his dear, dead heart,

And dreams disturb him never.
Be deeper peace than Paradise his part
For ever and for ever."

Or, "the supreme beatitude of rest," as Jack's friend
John Myers O'Hara has it.

Months after Jack's death I had the first and only
"vision" of my experience. When a great asking comes
upon me, in ungifted hours when my lamp burns low, I
think of it. Rising one morning with a renewed cheerful
ness that bubbled over into song, suddenly, as clearly as
ever I had looked upon the man, I saw Jack stepping
blithely in a green domain, tlie very picture of an Elysian
pastoral, whistling comradely to an unmistakable friend
shadowing his heel — Peggy the Beloved, our small canine

390 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

Irish saint of the Southern Seas. What was it — a miscal
culation of my Unconscious that let the dear dream spill
over into Foreconsciousness to rejoice the day?

The sun went down upon our endeavor. They had
brought him across into my glass porch, scene of so much
quiet happiness, and there he died upon the couch where, a
scant twenty-four hours earlier, he had cried to me : " You
must understand my need ! You're all I Ve got left !"

We watched. The good breathing that had upborne ex
pectation of recovery began to lag, and more labored became
intake and suspiration. I became aware that one of the
Sonoma physicians was leading me from where I stood at
Jack's head. Mechanically we sat down in my room.
Minutes passed, a few, an eternity of them, it seemed.
Longer were the intervals between those breaths so plainly
heard, a very great interval, another, and then silence abso
lute, the sheerest vacuum of sound I had ever known. No
one moved until Sekine, his face an oriental mask of ivory,
stepped in and bent his head to me.

I, who had never before lost any one essentially close ; I,
who had been protected from all outward semblances of
death, half an hour later went out with my own dead and
sat by the sheeted form until, with every atom of under
standing I possessed, I had reckoned for all time with the
hitherto unthinkable: that ultimate silence lay upon the
lips of my man. Let me review that day a thousand-
thousand times, there is nothing new to face. The worst
had befallen; the future was plain, a horizonless expanse
of ready work in which one must in good time build out
of the wreck a renewed, if different, joy of living and
serving. It was good. It has worked. It has continued
to work, test incontrovertible. I proclaim to these who
mourn overmuch, the worth and solace of my remedy.

When, later in the evening, we crept, his true sister and
I, into Jack's old sleeping-place, all was restored to order
by Sekine. The broad bed was laid and turned, the pillows

THE LAST SUMMER 391

piled ready for the reader, the little table set to rights, even
to cigarettes, freshly-sharpened pencils, and thermos bottles
of water and milk. It was incredible that the one-time tenant
should be lying, cold and insensible, across the house. We
looked at each other dumbly, and I sought the Japanese lad.

"We always do it in our country for those who have
died," he said unsteadily. "And I thought " His ex
planation trailed into silence as he turned away. As long
as he remained with the household, the bed was always in
order, and we kept a single flower there and on the work-
table.

Once, twice, in his later years, Jack, in chance reference
to the possibility of his dying first, departed from his
familiar careless injunction of ' ' Oh, if I should go, scatter
my ashes to the winds, or, if you prefer, upon the bay or
ocean ! ' ' Eliza and I both recalled the time, when, speaking
of his love and hopes for the ranch, he remarked :

"If I should beat you to it, I wouldn't mind if you laid
my ashes on the knoll where the Greenlaw children are
buried. And roll over me a red boulder from the ruins of
the Big House. I wouldn't want many to come. You might
ask George. "

But before his chosen ceremonial there were thrust in
occasions which, left to his own choice, he would not have
stipulated. Clothed in his favorite gray, as in gray I had
first seen him sixteen years before, for a day in his work
room he lay, in a gray casket that was like nothing so much
as a cradle. Passing by I was touched by the smallness
of it. I had thought Jack a larger man.

The neighbors came and went, in tearful awe of the unex
pected demise of the lovable friend they yet had never
understood. Little as he would have approved of exhibit
ing the discarded shell of him, it would have been needless
affront to the tribute these people were accustomed to pay
to the dead. And they had loved him more than they
thought. As one of them said:

392 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

1 ' I tell you, the death of Jack means a sorry day to many.
He gave away a meal ticket and added to it a bit, too. His
heart went out to the fellow who carried a roll of blankets —
or no blankets. "

On Friday, at dawn, I was awakened from fitful sleep by
the rumble of the death-wagon coming up the hill. When,
delaying, I slipped in to the abandoned workroom, the open
window through which he had so often passed alive told of
the manner in which Jack London had gone from his house.

Sekine came to where I sat, thinking, adjusting, and
held out a handful of keys, the dingy Klondike coin-sack of
chamois, and a few stray notes, all taken from the ranch suit
Jack had last worn. Sekine murmured something about
having put some notes in the breast-pocket of the burial
clothes, together with a pencil and pad — " Just as he always
had them, Missis," he whispered.

"But, Sekine, the notes, what notes!" I asked, biting
back the trembling of my lips at thought of the pitiful last
service the boy had rendered, but fearful lest some latest
words of Jack 's had gone beyond recall.

"Something 1 wrote, and sent with him — no one will
know," Sekine explained. "I wrote," raising his head,
1 Your Speech was silver, your Silence now is golden. ' That
was all. It was my Good-by."

My next step was to Jack's work-table, upon which lay
the unfinished manuscript of "Cherry," just as he had laid
down his pen. There, in that moment, looking at what was
but an example of the myriad things he had left, in a flash
it came to me :

"My life cannot be long enough to mend the broken
things — to carry on the tasks that are left for me."

Eliza did me a supreme service that morning, when she
accompanied Jack's casket from Glen Ellen to the Cre
matory in Oakland. One who met the little cortege in
Oakland was Yoshimatsu Nakata, whom Sekine had suc
ceeded. No, I was not ill, as the report went out. I pre-

THE LAST SUMMEE 393

ferred to remain away from a funeral which represented
Jack's idea so little, but which I felt should be accorded
to his daughters and their mother. Several friends, in
cluding Frederick Bamford and others of the old Euskin
Club, were also there, and two or three persons who had
corresponded with Jack now saw him for the first time.
A short address was delivered by the Eev. Edward B.
Payne, who was familiar with Jack's unorthodox views ; and
a poem, which had been asked of George Sterling, was read
above his friend.

As regards the manner of his disposal, Jack himself,
only a few weeks before, had had this to say, in reply to a
query from Dr. Hugo Erichson, writing for the Cremation
Association of America, the same having been submitted
to a number of persons of national prominence :

4 'Glen Ellen, California, October 16, 1916.
' * Dear Doctor Erichson : —

' ' In reply to yours of recent date, undated

"Cremation is the only decent, right, sensible way of ridding
the world of us when the world has ridden itself of us. Also, it is
the only fair way, toward our children, and grandchildren, and all
the generations to come after us. Why should we clutter the land
scape and sweet-growing ground with our moldy memories? Be
sides, we have the testimony of all history that all such sad egotistic
efforts have been failures. The best the Pharaohs could do with
their pyramids was to preserve a few shriveled relics of themselves
for our museums. ' '

I have little connected memory of Friday and Satur
day. I know there was work to do, and that I slept long
night hours under the ministering hands of dear women.
And I walked about the farm precincts, looking rather
curiously at the young life, animal and vegetable, which
Jack had fostered into being. Yet he, the biggest "mote of
life between the darks ' ' had vanished in a day ! Wherever
I appeared, I was conscious of some workman slipping
away, or a face turned aside in a handkerchief. The half

394 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

hundred men, many of whom had never conversed with
their employer, seemed unnerved by the sudden gap in their
little universe.

Jack, himself, would not have believed the warmth there
was toward him in the skeptical old earth. As one ex
pressed it:

' ' To me it seems like having a light turned off, with too
few already burning, leaving the road darker and more
dismal and difficult."

It was almost as if his actual death purged the mankind
who knew him and his work, of jealousy, hate, and carping
criticism; put a seal upon the lips of the meanest. Even
his bitterest detractors tried to be fair and charitable. If I
needed corroboration of my own belief in this man of mine,
I could recall the mourning of his world. It must have
arisen from his usefulness, his big contribution of heart's
blood to humanity. Praise of him from all quarters and in
many tongues from every class of society, literally from
rich man, poor man, beggar man, chief, doctor, lawyer, and
the rest — aye, thief, and worse ! Out of prisons has come to
me a wail at his passing; for the immaterial sweetness of
Jack and his code, squareness, his long-suffering charity,
that patriarchal kindness, had passed in and still live behind
the bars.

To him, so articulate in the Great Common Things:
" Three common pitmen in Durham will keep his memory
green while hearts are able to respond to the bounteous
thought of his love," reads a letter from England. "The
sweetness of his life and work can never die."

And another, no less than his trail-mate, Hargrave,
wrote :

* l Always I have been assaulted by doubts ; and then, coincident
with the message that Jack had passed the portal that bars the
Unknown from the Known, those doubts (independent of mental
processes) were dispelled. I gave no reason for it — the reasons of
men are such vain things in the presence of the Infinite. ' '

THE LAST SUMMEB 395

This from one more " sour-dough ": "I loved the man
because — because he was a man ; By the Turtles of Tasman,
He was a man!"

And this for the premanency of his message :

' l He touched the lowly side of life with a pen horn of love and
bitter experience. ... He had lived with down and outs, and with
animals. . . . And he wrote their tragic lives as no human ever
wrote them before. ... So long as there are human hearts that
feel the tender touch of love, so long as there are honest souls that
revolt at cruelty and oppression, so long will Jack London's books
and stories live and be read."

"If Jack London had had faith, what a great preacher
he would have made!" Dr. H. J. Loken, of Berkeley, ex
claimed to his congregation, and went on to declare that
his subject was of a deeply religious nature, pointing out
that his criticisms had been of religion as found in the
churches and not against Christianity itself.

One thing I do clearly recollect of those two days before
Jack's ashes were placed upon the Little Hill: Eliza and I
walked there alone in a wintry sunset. Hazen, who had
preceded us with a spade to mark the spot, received his
instructions about the red boulder. Six horses were needed
to move it upon the steep knoll.

On Sunday morning, November 26, Ernest Matthews,
accompanied by George Sterling, brought the urn from
Oakland. We wreathed it with ferns and with yellow prim
roses from the sweet old garden. With the primroses, as
a tribute to Jack's adopted home, Hawaii, I wound the
withered rust-colored leis of ilima once given Jack in Hono
lulu by Frank linger and Colonel Sam Parker, now, too,
both under the ground. One terrible moment was mine
when, in the rain, I carried the small, light vessel to the
wagon, the same in which Jack had so blithely driven his
four. The urn seemed to gather weight until I thought I
should be pressed to the earth, but I reached the hands that

396 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON

placed it upon the hight seat before it had become insupport
able ,

Eliza and I, together, and my people, followed the horses
at a distance. When we had all gathered upon the dripping
slope, Mr. G. L. Parslow, our oldest ranchman, received the
urn from Ernest Matthews, and set it, with its flowers, in the
tile already cemented into the ground. At that moment a
great flood of sun-gold spilled upon us from a break in the
leaden sky.

As the trowel relentlessly filled the space within the
tile, with that curious transparency of mind in crises in
which details stand out, I observed with satisfaction that
was a reflection of Jack's effective sense of proportion, that
exactly the right proportion of mortar had been mixed,
not a trowelful too much or too little.

No word stirred the hush. No prayer, for Jack London
prayed to no God but humanity. The men, uncovered,
reverent, stood about among the trees, and when their
senior had risen, the stone was rolled into place.

Before we turned to retrace our forlorn steps to the
house, it had come to me, once and forever, that this unpre
tentious sepulture beneath the tall pine was but a self-
chosen memorial. Death, with Jack, had not seemed like
death. Nature had slipped the moorings, and he, "bold
sailor of the grey-green sea," had gone out with the tide,
gallant, victorious, cruising beyond the outer reef, into the
West, to a paradise of green lands with an ocean of sails
just over the hill. This rugged monument, by his own wish,
could never be a place for mourning, a spot to sadden his
sweet and happy mountainside. And, by that wish and
whatever gods may be, it never has been. Beautiful, sing
ing with birds, vocal with winds among the tree-tops, Jack 's
Little Hill appeals only to contemplation and tender melan
choly. There is nothing better than that the pilgrim,
standing above the mellow purple boulder, should say :

"By the Turtles of Tasman, lie was a man!"

APPENDIX
JACK LONDON BIBLIOGRAPHY

SERIAL. PUBLICATION
1893

Typhoon off the Coast of Japan — SAN FRANCISCO CALL, November
12, 1893.

1894

An Old Soldier's Story — EVENINGS AT HOME (Oakland, California),

May.
Old Baldy — EVENINGS AT HOME, September.

1895
'Frisco Kid's Stories — series in Oakland High School AEGIS.

1896
A Problem — AMATEUR BOHEMIAN (Oakland), March.

1899

To the Man on Trail — OVERLAND MONTHLY (San Francisco), Jan
uary.

The White Silence — OVERLAND MONTHLY (San Francisco), Feb
ruary.

The Son of the Wolf — OVERLAND MONTHLY (San Francisco), April.

He Chortled with Glee (triolet) — TOWN TOPICS (San Francisco),
April 20.

If I Were God One Hour (poem) — TOWN TOPICS (San Francisco),
May 11.

The Men of Forty Mile — OVERLAND MONTHLY (San Francisco),
May

On Furlough — ORANGE JUDD FARMER, May 20.

A Thousand Deaths — BLACK CAT MAGAZINE, May.

From Dawson to the Sea — BUFFALO EXPRESS, June 4.

Through the Rapids on the Way to Klondike— HOME MAGAZINE,
June.

In a Far Country — OVERLAND MONTHLY, June.

397

398 APPENDIX

Unmasking of the Cad (tableau) — TILLOTSON SYNDICATE, July.

What Are We to Say? — AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, July.

Strange Verbs — AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, July.

The Priestly Prerogative — OVERLAND MONTHLY, July.

The Handsome Cabin Boy — THE OWL, July.

The Wife of a King — OVERLAND MONTHLY, August.

Eggs Without Salt (Joke) — TOWN TOPICS, August 31.

In the Time of Prince Charley — CONKEY'S MAGAZINE, September.

On the Writer's Philosophy of Life — THE EDITOR, October.

The King of the Mazy May — YOUTH'S COMPANION, November.

The Rejuvenation of Major Rathbone — CONKEY'S MAGAZINE, No
vember.

The Wisdom of the Trail — OVERLAND MONTHLY, December.

A Daughter of the Aurora — CHRISTMAS WAVE ''San Francisco),
December.

1900

Economics in the Klondike — REVIEW OF REVIEWS, January.

An Odyssey of the North — ATLANTIC MONTHLY, January.

Pluck and Pertinacity — YOUTH'S COMPANION, January 4.

The Impossibility of War — OVERLAND MONTHLY, March.

A Lesson in Heraldry — NATIONAL MAGAZINE, March.

When He Came In (triolet) — TOWN TOPICS, April 26.

A Reminiscence of Boston — BOSTON TRANSCRIPT, May 26.

The End of the Chapter — s. F. NEWS LETTER, June.

The Husky — HARPER'S WEEKLY, June 30.

Which Make Men Remember (Uri Bram's God) — s. F. SUNDAY
EXAMINER, June 24.

Even Unto Death — s. F. EVENING POST, July 28.

The Dignity of Dollars — OVERLAND MONTHLY, July.

Grit of Women — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, August.

Jan, the Unrepentant — OUTING MAGAZINE, August.

On Expansion (editorial) — THE WAVE (s. F.), August 11.

The Shrinkage of the Planet — CHAUTAUQUAN MAGAZINE, September.

Their Alcove — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, September.

The Man with the Gash — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, September.

Housekeeping in the Klondike — HARPER'S BAZAAR, September 15.

The Phenomena of Literary Evolution — THE BOOKMAN, October.

" Girlie" — THE SMART SET, October.

Thanksgiving on Slav Creek — HARPER'S BAZAAR, November 24.

What a Community Loses by the Competitive System — COSMOPOLI
TAN MAGAZINE, November.

Dutch Courage — YOUTH'S COMPANION, November 29.

The Question of a Name — THE WRITER, December.

The Material Side (First Aid to Rising Authors) — JUNIOR MUNSEY
MAGAZINE, December.

The Great Interrogation — AINSLIE'S MAGAZINE, December.

APPENDIX 399

Semper Idem — BLACK CAT MAGAZINE, December.
Where the Trail Forks — OUTING MAGAZINE, December.
Bald Face — THE NEWS, December.

1901

A Relic of the Pliocene — COLLIER'S WEEKLY, January 12.

Sonnet — THE DILETTANTE (Oakland), February.

Lover's Liturgy— THE RAVEN (Oakland), February.

The Law of Life — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, March.

The Lost Poacher — YOUTH'S COMPANION, March 14.

At the Rainbow's End — MCCLURE'S SYNDICATE (PITTSBURG LEADER),
March 24.

Siwash — AINSLIE'S MAGAZINE, March.

Editorial Crimes — THE DILETTANTE (Oakland), March.

The Scorn of Women — OVERLAND MONTHLY, May.

Minions of Midas — PEARSON'S MAGAZINE, May.

The God of His Fathers — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, May.

Chris Farrington: Able Seaman — YOUTH'S COMPANION, May 23.

Oregon Article- — s. F. EXAMINER, June 13.

Washoe Article — s. F. EXAMINER, Sunday, June 16.

Review of The Octopus (Norris) — IMPRESSIONS (San Francisco),
June.

A Hyperborean Brew — METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE, July.

Girl Fighting Duel (article) — s. F. EXAMINER, July 21.

The Schuetzenfest Articles — s. F. EXAMINER, July 15 to 24.

Daybreak — NATIONAL MAGAZINE, August.

P'eter de Ville (article) — s. F. EXAMINER, October 14.

Villanelle : The Worker and the Tramp — THE COMRADE, October.

Review of Lincoln and Other Poems (Markham) — s. F. EXAMINER,
November 10.

Ruhling-Jeffries Fight — s. F. EXAMINER, November 16.

Review of Foma Gordyieff (Gorky) — IMPRESSIONNS (s. F.), Novem
ber.

1902

Interview of Governor Taft — s. F. EXAMINER, January 22.

Keesh, Son of Keesh — AINSLEE'S MAGAZINE, January.

Interview with a Millionaire Socialist — s. F. EXAMINER, April 18.

The Stampede to Thunder Mountain — COLLIER'S WEEKLY, May 3.

To Build a Fire — YOUTH'S COMPANION, May 29.

An Adventure in the Upper Sea — N. Y. INDEPENDENT, May 29.

To Repel Boarders — ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, June.

Batard (Diable, a Dog) — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, June.

Moon Face — THE ARGONAUT (s. F.), July 21.

The Cruise of the Dazzler — ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, July.

The Fuzziness of Hookla Heen — YOUTH'S COMPANION, July 3.

Nambok the Unveracious — AINSLIE'S MAGAZINE, August.

400 APPENDIX

Li Wan the Fair — ATLANTIC MONTHLY, August.

Wanted: A New Law of Development — INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST

REVIEW, August.

Rods and Gunnels — THE BOOKMAN, August.
The Salt of the Earth — ANGLO-AMERICAN MAGAZINE, August.
In the Forests of the North — PEARSON 's MAGAZINE, September.
Again the Literary Aspirant — THE CRITIC, September.
The Master of Mystery — OUT WEST (Los Angeles), September.
The Story of Jees Uck — THE SMART SET, September.
The Sickness of Lone Chief — OUT WEST, October.
The League of the Old Men — BRANDUR MAGAZINE, October.
The Hearst Memorial Building — s. P. EXAMINER, November 19.

1903

In Yeddo Bay — ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, February.
Getting into Print — THE EDITOR, March.
How I Became a Socialist — THE COMRADE, March.
The One Thousand Dozen — NATIONAL MAGAZINE, March.
Contradictory Teachers : Our Benevolent Feudalism, Social Unrest

(A Review) — INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, May.
The Terrible and Tragic in Fiction — THE CRITIC, June.
Faith of Men — SUNSET MAGAZINE, June.
The Shadow and the Flash — THE BOOKMAN, June.
The Call of the Wild — SATURDAY SVENING POST, June 20-July 18.
People of the Abyss---wiLsmRE 's MAGAZINE, March-January, 1904.
Article on Boy Criminal — s. F. EXAMINER, June 21.
These Bones Shall Rise Again — THE READER, June.
Gold Hunters of the North — ATLANTIC MONTHLY, July.
The Leopard Man's Story — LESLIE'S MAGAZINE, August.
Stranger Than Fiction — THE CRITIC, August.
The Marriage of Lit-Lit — LESLIE'S MAGAZINE, September.
Local Color — AINSLIE'S MAGAZINE, October.
The Class Struggle — N. Y. INDEPENDENT, November 5.
Amateur Night — THE PILGRIM, December.
Too Much Gold — AINSLIE'S MAGAZINE, December.

1904

The Golden Poppy — THE DELINEATOR, January.

The Story of Keesh — HOLIDAY MAGAZINE, January.

The Scab — ATLANTIC MONTHLY, January.

The Sea Wolf — CENTURY MAGAZINE, January-November.

The Tramp — WILSHIRE MAGAZINE, February-March.

Russian- Japanese War Correspondence — HEARST PAPERS, February-
June.

On the Banks of the Sacramento — YOUTH'S COMPANION, March 17.

The Yellow Peril — s. F. EXAMINER, September 25.

Explanation of the Great Socialist Vote of the United States — s. F.
EXAMINER, November 10.

APPENDIX 401

1905

White and Yellow — YOUTH'S COMPANION, February 16.

The King of the Crooks — YOUTH'S COMPANION, March 2.

A Raid on the Oyster Pirates — YOUTH'S COMPANION, March 16.

The Siege of the " Lancashire Queen" — YOUTH'S COMPANION,

March 30.

Charley's Coup — YOUTH'S COMPANION, April 13.
Demetrios Contos — YOUTH'S COMPANION, April 27.
The Game — METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE, April-May.
Yellow Handkerchief — YOUTH'S COMPANION, May 11.
The Walking Delegate (Review) — s. F. EXAMINER, May 28.
The White Man's Way — SUNDAY MAGAZINE SYNDICATE, July.
Britt-Nelson Fight — s. F. EXAMINER, September 10.
The Long Day (Review) — s. F. EXAMINER, October.
Love of Life — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, December.
All Gold Canyon — CENTURY MAGAZINE, November.
The Sun Dog Trail — HARPER'S MAGAZINE, December.
Holy Jumpers Article — BOSTON AMERICAN, December 19.

1906

What Life Means to Me — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, March.

A Nose for the King — BLACK CAT, March.

White Fang — OUTING MAGAZINE, May-October.

Earthquake Article — COLLIER'S WEEKLY, May 5.

Planchette — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, June- August.

Brown Wolf — EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, August.

The Unexpected — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, August.

Review of THE JUNGLE (Sinclair) — N. Y. JOURNAL, August 8.

Review of THE JUNGLE (complete) — WILSHIRE'S MAGAZINE, August.

My Best Short Story — THE GRAND MAGAZINE (London), August.

The Apostate — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, September.

Before Adam — EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, October, '06 to Feb., '07.

Up the Slide — YOUTH'S COMPANION, October 25.

A Wicked Woman — THE SMART SET, November.

Letter to H. M. Bland — STORY CLUB MAGAZINE, November.

Moyer-Haywood Article — Chicago DAILY SOCIALIST, November 4.

First Boat Letter (Snark Voyage) — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION,

November.

The Somnambulists — N. Y. INDEPENDENT, December 20.
The Wit of Porportuk — TIMES MAGAZINE, December.
The Cruise of the Snark — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, December.

1907

When God Laughs — THE SMART SET, January.

My Castle in Spain — THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL, January.

Is Jack London a Plagiarist ? — N. Y. INDEPENDENT, February 14.

Just Meat — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, March.

402 APPENDIX

Created He Them — THE PACIFIC MONTHLY, April.

Finis ("Morganson's Finish") — SUCCESS MAGAZINE, May.

Confession — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, May.

A Day's Lodging — COLLIER'S WEEKLY, May 25.

Holding Her Down — COSMOPOLITAN, June.

Pinched — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, July.

The Pen — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, August.

Pictures — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, September.

Chased by the Trail — YOUTH 's COMPANION, Sept. 26.

Two Thousand Stiffs — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, October.

A Royal Sport (Riding the South Sea Surf) — WOMAN'S HOME COM
PANION, October.

The Intercollegiate Socialist Society — POTENTIA SYNDICATE, October.

Gay Cats and Road Kids — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, November.

Hoboes that Pass in the Night — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, De
cember.

1908

Revolution — CONTEMPORARY REVIEW (New York), January.
The Passing of Marcus O'Brien — THE READER, January.
Trust — CENTURY MAGAZINE, January.

The Lepers of Molokai — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, January.
That Spot — SUNSET MAGAZINE, February.

Bulls — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, March.

The Inconceivable and Monstrous — HARPER'S WEEKLY, July 18.

Adventure — HARPER'S WEEKLY, July 25.

To Build a Fire — CENTURY MAGAZINE, August.

Finding One's Way About — HARPER'S WEEKLY, August 1.

The First Landfall — HARPER'S WEEKLY, August 8.

The Other Animals — COLLIER'S WEEKLY, September 5.

The Nature Man — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, September.

Flush of Gold — HAMPTON'S BROADWAY MAGAZINE, October.

The Enemy of All the World — THE RED BOOK, October.

The High Seat of Abundance — WOMAN'S HOME COMPANION, No
vember.

Martin Eden — PACIFIC MONTHLY, Sept., 1908, to Sept., 1909.

Lost Face — N. Y. HERALD, December 13.

A Curious Fragment — TOWN TOPICS, December 10.

Burns-Johnson Fight — N. Y. HERALD and Syndicate, and Sydney,
Australia, STAR, December 27.

1909

The House of Mapuhi — MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, January.

The Dream of Debs — INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, January-
February.

First Impressions of Australia — THE STAR, Sydney, Australia.
(This series of articles published January.)

On Strikes.

APPENDIX 403

The Japanese Question.

Fortune in a Newspaper.

Sobraun Article.

The Yankee Myth.

The Seed of McCoy — CENTURY MAGAZINE, April.

Beche de Mer English ("Too Much English") — WOMAN'S HOMH
COMPANION, April.

Make Westing — SUNSET MAGAZINE, April.

Aloha Oe — THE SMART SET, May.

South of the Slot — SATURDAY EVENING POST, May 22.

Good-by, Jack ! — THE RED BOOK, June.

The Chinago — HARPER'S MONTHLY, July.

The Sheriff of Kona — AMERICAN MAGAZINE, August.

A Piece of Steak — SATURDAY EVENING POST, November 29.

Letter to Arthur Stringer (Nature-Faking) — CANADA WEST MONTH
LY, November.

Koolau the Leper — THE PACIFIC MONTHLY, December.

Mauki — HAMPTON'S MAGAZINE, December.

The Japanese Question — SUNSET MAGAZINE, December.

1910

The House of the Sun — PACIFIC MONTHLY, January.

The Whale Tooth — SUNSET MAGAZINE, January.

A Pacific Traverse, PACIFIC MONTHLY, February.

Goliah, THE BOOKMAN, February.

Typee — PACIFIC MONTHLY, March.

Chun Ah Chun — WOMAN'S MAGAZINE, March.

The Terrible Solomons — HAMPTON 's MAGAZINE, March.

The Stone-Fishing at Bora Bora — PACIFIC MONTHLY, April.

An Amateur Navigator — PACIFIC MONTHLY, May.

Cruising in the Solomons — PACIFIC MONTHLY, June-July.

Burning Daylight — NEW YORK HERALD, June 19-August 28.

Jeffries-Johnson Fight articles — NEW YORK HERALD and Syndicate
(Eleven articles) June 24 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, July 2, 3, 4
(training camp) ; 5 (fight).

The Unparalleled Invasion — MC CLURE'S MAGAZINE, July.

Letter on Young Authors' Endowment — N. Y. INDEPENDENT,
July 28.

The Amateur M.D. — PACIFIC MONTHLY, August.

The Heathen — EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, August.

When the World Was Young — SATURDAY EVENING POST, Sep
tember 10.

Winged Blackmail — THE LEVER (Chicago), September.

Adventure (Novel) — POPULAR MAGAZINE, Nov. 1-Jan. 15, 1911.

The Benefit of the Doubt — SATURDAY EVENING POST, November 12.

Under the Deck Awnings — SATURDAY EVENING POST, November 19.

The Madness of John Harned — EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, November

404 APPENDIX

The Inevitable White Man — BLACK CAT MAGAZINE, November.
The House of Pride — PACIFIC MONTHLY, December.
To Kill a Man — SATURDAY EVENING POST, December 10.
Yah ! Yah ! Yah ! — COLUMBIAN MAGAZINE, December.
Bunches of Knuckles — NEW YORK HERALD, December 18.

1911

The Human Drift — THE FORUM, January.

The Hobo and the Fairy — SATURDAY EVENING POST, February 11.

The Eternity of Forms — THE RED BOOK, March.

The Strength of the Strong — HAMPTON'S MAGAZINE, March.

A Son of the Sun — SATURDAY EVENING POST, May 27.

War — London NATION, May.

An Alaskan Vacation — PANAMA MAGAZINE, May.

SMOKE BELLEW: The Taste of the Meat — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,

June.

The First Poet (play) — CENTURY MAGAZINE, June.
The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn — SATURDAY EVENING POST,

June 24.

The Goat Man of Fautino — SATURDAY EVENING POST, July 29.
The Night Born — EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, July.
SMOKE BELLEW: The Meat — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, July.
The Mexican — SATURDAY EVENING POST, August 19.
SMOKE BELLEW: The Stampede to Squaw Creek — COSMOPOLITAN

MAGAZINE, August.

Navigating Four Horses North of the Bay — SUNSET MAGAZINE,
September.

The Abysmal Brute — POPULAR MAGAZINE, September 1.

SMOKE BELLEW: Shorty Dreams — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, Sep
tember.

A Little Account with Swithin Hall — SATURDAY EVENING POST,
September 2.

A Gobotu Night — SATURDAY EVENING POST, September 30.

SMOKE BELLEW : The Man on the Other Bank — COSMOPOLITAN
MAGAZINE, October.

The Pearls of Parlay — SATURDAY EVENING POST, October 14.

SMOKE BELLEW : The Race for Number Three — COSMOPOLITAN MAGA
ZINE, November.

Nothing that Ever Came to Anything — SUNSET MAGAZINE, No
vember.

The Jokers of New Gibbon — SATURDAY EVENING POST, November 11.

The End of the Story — WOMAN'S WORLD, November.

By the Turtles of Tasman — MONTHLY MAGAZINE SECTION (Hearst),
November.

SMOKE BELLEW: The Little Man — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, De
cember.

A Classic of the Sea — N. Y. INDEPENDENT, December 14.

APPENDIX 405

1912

SMOKE BELLEW: The Hanging of Cultus George — COSMOPOLITAN

MAGAZINE, January.
SMOKE BELLEW : The Mistake of Creation — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,

February.
SMOKE BELLEW: A Flutter in Eggs — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,

March.

The Sea Farmer — THE BOOKMAN, March.
The Grilling of Lorrin Ellery — NORTHERN WEEKLY GAZETTE (TTLLOT-

SON SYNDICATE), March.

Feathers of the Sun — SATURDAY EVENING POST, March 9.
Smoke Bellew : The Townsite of Tra-Lee — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,

April.

The Prodigal Father — WOMAN'S WORLD, May.
SMOKE BELLEW : The Wonder of Woman — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,

May, June.

Small Boat Sailing — COUNTRY LIFE IN AMERICA, August.
The Captain of the Susan Drew (The Tar Pot) — MONTHLY MAGA
ZINE SECTION, November 24.

1913

John Barleycorn — SATURDAY EVENING POST, March 15-May 3.

The Valley of the Moon — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, April-De
cember.

Samuel — THE BOOKMAN, May.

The Scarlet Plague — AMERICAN SUNDAY MONTHLY MAGAZINE, June
8-Sept. 14.

The Mutiny of the Elsinore (The Sea Gangsters) — HEARST'S MAGA
ZINE, Nov., 1913, to Aug., 1914.

1914

Mexican War Correspondence from Vera Cruz — COLLIER'S WEEKLY :

The Bed Game of War, May 16.

With Funston's Men, May 23.

Mexico's Army and Ours, May 30.

Stalking the Pestilence, June 6.

The Trouble-Makers of Mexico, June 13.

The Law-Givers, June 20.

Our Adventures in Tampico, June 27.
Told in the Drooling Ward — THE BOOKMAN, June.
The Star Rover — AMERICAN SUNDAY MONTHLY MAGAZINE, Sep
tember 6, 1914-October 3, 1915.

1915

The Little Lady of the Big House— COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, April,
1915, to January, 1916.

406 APPENDIX

1916

Our Guiltless Scapegoats, the Stricken of Molokai (article) — PUB
LIC LEDGER, Philadelphia, June 21.

Politics and Leprosy — PUBLIC LEDGER, Philadelphia, August 6.

My Hawaiian Aloha (three articles) — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,
September-November.

The Hussy — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, December.

1917

Jerry — COSMOPOLITAN, January- April.

The Kanaka Surf (Man of Mine) — HEARST'S MAGAZINE, February.

Like Argus of the Ancient Times — HEARST'S MAGAZINE, March.

Michael — COSMOPOLITAN, May-October.

The Bones of Kahekili — COSMOPOLITAN, July.

1918

When Alice Told Her Soul — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, March.
The Princess — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, June.
The Tears of Ah Kim — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, July.
The Water Baby — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, September.
The Red One — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, October.
In the Cave of the Dead (Shin Bones) — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,
November.

1919

On the Makaloa Mat — COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE, March.
Hearts of Three — N. Y. JOURNAL, May 11, June 21.

BOOKS

1 — THE SON OF THE WOLF, Houghton, Mifflin Company, April 7,

1900.
(Collected stories)

The White Silence
The Son of the Wolf
The Men of Forty Mile
In a Far Country
To the Man on Trail
The Priestly Prerogative
The Wisdom of the Trail
The Wife of a King
An Odyssey of the North

2 — THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS, McClure, Phillips & Company, May,

1901.
(Collected stories)

The God of His Fathers

The Great Interrogation

Which Makes Men Remember

Siwash

The Man with the Gash.

Jan, the Unrepentant

Grit of Women

Where the Trail Forks

A Daughter of the Aurora

At the Rainbow's End

The Scorn of Women

3 — A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS, J. B. Lippincott Co., October, 1902.
(Novel)

4 — CHILDREN OF THE FROST, The Macmillan Company, September,

1902.
(Collected stories)

In the Forests of the North
The Law of Life
Nam-Bok the Un veracious
The Master of Mystery
The Sunlanders
The Sickness of Lone Chief
Keesh, the Son of Keesh
The Death of Ligoun

407

408 APPENDIX

Li Wan, the Fair

The League of the Old Men

5 — THE CRUISE OF THE DAZZLER, The Century Co., October, 1902.
(Juvenile)

6 — THE CALL OF THE WILD, The Macmillan Company, July, 1903.
(Novel)

7 — THE KEMPTON-WACE LETTERS, The Macmillan Company, May,

1903.

(A series of Philosophical Letters on Love. Written in Collab
oration with Anna Strunsky.)

8 — THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS, The Macmillan Company, November,

1903.
(First-hand observation of the East End of London.)

9 — THE FAITH OF MEN, The Macmillan Company, April, 1904.
(Collected stories)

A Relic of the Pliocene

A Hyperborean Brew

The Faith of Men.

Too Much Gold

The One Thousand Dozen

The Marriage of Lit-Lit

Batard

The Story of Jees-Uck

10 — THE SEA WOLF, The Macmillan Company, October, 1904.
(Novel)

11 — WAR OF THE CLASSES, The Macmillan Company, April, 1905.
(Sociological essays)
The Class Struggle
The Tramp
The Scab

The Question of the Maximum
A Review (Contradictory Teachers).
Wanted: A New Law of Development
How I Became a Socialist

12 — THE GAME, The Macmillan Company, June, 1905.
(Novel)

13 — TALES OF THE FISH PATROL, The Macmillan Company, Septem
ber, 1905.
(Juvenile)

White and Yellow

The King of the Crooks

A Raid on Oyster Pirates

The Siege of the ''Lancashire Queen"

APPENDIX 409

Charley's Coup
Demetrios Contos
Yellow Handkerchief

14 — MOON-FACE ANE OTHER STORIES, The Macmillan Company, Sep
tember, 1906.
(Collected stories)

Moon-Face : A Story of a Mortal Antipathy

The Leopard Man's Story

Local Color

Amateur Night

The Minions of Midas

The Shadow and the Flash

All Gold Canyon

Planchette

15 — SCORN OF WOMEN, The Macmillan Company, November, 1906.
(Play)

16 — WHITE FANG, The Macmillan Company, September, 1906.
(Novel)

17 — LOVE OF LIFE, AND OTHER STORIES, The Macmillan Company,

September, 1907.
(Collected stories)
Love of Life
A Day's Lodging
The White Man's Way
The Story of Keesh
The Unexpected
Brown Wolf
The Sun Dog Trail
Negore, the Coward

18 — BEFORE ADAM, The Macmillan Company, February, 1907.
(Novel)

19 — THE ROAD, The Macmillan Company, November, 1907.
(Tramping Experiences)
Confession
Holding Her Down
Pictures
"Pinched"
The Pen

Hoboes that Pass in the Night
Road-Kids and Gay- Cats
Two Thousand Stiffs
Bulls

20 — TKE IRON HEEL, The Macmillan Company, February, 1908.
(Novel)

410 APPENDIX

21 — MARTIN EDEN, The Macmillan Company, September, 1909.
(Semi-autobiographic Novel)

22 — LOST FACE, The Macmillan Company, March, 1910.
(Collected stories)
Lost Face
Trust

To Build a Fire
That Spot
Flush of Gold

The Passing of Marcus O'Brien
The Wit of Porportuk

23 — REVOLUTION, The Macmillan Company, March, 1910.
(Sociological Essays and Others)
Revolution
The Somnambulists
The Dignity of Dollars
Goliah

The Golden Poppy
The Shrinkage of the Planet
The House Beautiful
The Gold Hunters of the North
Foma Gordyeeff
These Bones Shall Rise Again
The Other Animals
The Yellow Peril
What Life Means to Me

24 — BURNING DAYLIGHT, The Macmillan Company, October, 1910.
(Novel)

25 — THEFT, The Macmillan Company, November, 1910.
(Play)

26 — WHEN GOD LAUGHS, The Macmillan Company, January, 1911.
(Collected stories)

When God Laughs
The Apostate
A Wicked Woman
Just Meat
Created He Them
The Chinago
Make Westing
Semper Idem
A Nose for the King
The Francis Spaight
A Curious Fragment
A Piece of Steak

APPENDIX 411

27 — ADVENTURE, The Macmillan Company, March, 1911.
(Novel)

28 THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK, The Macmillan Company, June,

1911.
(Articles)

Foreword.

The Inconceivable and Monstrous

Adventure

Finding One's Way About

The First Landfall

A Royal Sport

The Lepers of Molokai

The House of the Sun

A Pacific Traverse

Typee

The Nature Man

The High Seat of Abundance

Stone-Fishing of Bora Bora

The Amateur Navigator

Cruising in the Solomons

Beche de Mer English

The Amateur M.D.

Backword

29 — SOUTH SEA TALES, The Macmillan Company, October, 1911.
(Collected stories)

The House of Mapuhi

The Whale Tooth

Mauki

"Yah! Yah! Yah!"

The Heathen

The Terrible Solomons

The Inevitable White Man

The Seed of McCoy

80 — A SON OF THE SUN, Doubleday, Page & Company, May, 1912.
(Collected stories)

A Son of the Sun

The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankburn

The Devils of Fuatino

The Jokers of New Gibbon

A Little Account with Swithin Hall

A Gobotu Night

The Feathers of the Sun

The Pearls of Parlay

31 — THE HOUSE OF PRIDE, The Macmillan Company, March, 1912.
(Collected stories)

The House of Pride

412 APPENDIX

Koolau the Leper
Good-by, Jack !
Aloha Oe
Chum Ah Chun
The Sheriff of Kona

32 — SMOKE BELLEW TALES, The Century Co., October, 1912.
The Taste of the Meat
The Meat

The Stampede to Squaw Creek
Shorty Dreams
The Man on the Other Bank
The Race for Number Three
The Little Man

The Hanging of Cultus George
The Mistake of Creation
A Flutter in Eggs
The Town-Site of Tra-Lee
Wonder of Woman

33 — THE NIGHT BORN, The Century Co., February, 1913.
(Collected stories)
The Night Born
The Madness of John Harned
When the World Was Young
The Benefit of the Doubt
Winged Blackmail
Bunches of Knuckles
War

Under the Deck Awnings
To Kill a Man
The Mexican

34 — THE ABYSMAL BRUTE, The Century Co., May, 1913.
(Novel)

35 — JOHN BARLEYCORN, The Century Co., August, 1913.
(Autobiographical novel)

36 — THE VALLEY OF THE MOON, The Macmillan Company, October,

1913.
(Novel)

37 — THE STRENGTH OF THE STRONG, The Macmillan Company, May,

1914.
(Collected stories)

The Strength of the Strong
South of the Slot
The Unparalleled Invasion
The Enemy of All the World
The Dream of Debs

APPENDIX 413

The Sea Farmer
Samuel

38 — THE MUTINY OF THE ELSiNORE, The Macmillan Company, Sep
tember, 1914.
(Novel)

39 — THE SCARLET PLAGUE, The Macmillan Company, May, 1915.
(Novel)

40 — THE STAR ROVER, The Macmillan Company, October, 1915.
(Novel)

41 — THE ACORN PLANTER, The Macmillan Company, February, 1916.
(Play)

42 — THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG HOUSE, The Macmillan Company,

April, 1916.
(Novel)

43 — THE TURTLES OF TASMAN, The Macmillan Company, September,

1916.
(Collected stories)

By the Turtles of Tasman
The Eternity of Forms
Told in the Drooling Ward
The Hobo and the Fairy
The Prodigal Father
The First Poet
Finis
The End of the Story

(This was the last book published before Jack London's death on
November 22, 1916.)

44 — THE HUMAN DRIFT, The Macmillan Company, February, 1917.
(Articles arranged by Jack London for publication shortly

before his death, and published posthumously.)
The Human Drift

Nothing that Ever Came to Anything
That Dead Men Rise Up Never
Small-boat Sailing
Four Horses and a Sailor
A Classic of the Sea
A Wicked Woman (Curtain Raiser)
The Birth Mark (Sketch)

45 — JERRY OF THE ISLANDS, The Macmillan Company, April, 1917.
(Novel)

46 — MICHAEL BROTHER OF JERRY, The Macmillan Company, No
vember, 1917.

414 APPENDIX

47 — THE RED ONE, The Macmillan Company, October, 1918.
(Collected stories)
The Red One
The Hussy

Like Argus of the Ancient Times
The Princess

48 — ON THE MAKALOA MAT, The Macmillan Company, September,

1919.
(Collected stories)

On the Makaloa Mat

The Bones of Kahekili

When Alice Told Her Soul

Shin-Bones

The Water Baby

The Tears of Ah Kim

The Kanaka Surf

49 — HEARTS OF THREE, The Macmillan Company, September, 1920.
(Novel for moving-picture, with explanatory Preface.)

Other collections, such as War Notes (Japanese-Russian, and Vera
Cruz, 1914), and Prize-Fight articles, will be issued in course
of time.

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