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, 
 
 Add 1 ! 
 
 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 : 
 
 ", } i n 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 WOLF 1 
 
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 way 1 ? 
 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 
 don r t 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 sickness 7 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! 
 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 Gawd! 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. 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 V 9 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 days 7 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 Theft 1 
 
 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 
 Moon 7 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 rouie y 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 V 9 
 
 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 7 s 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 I 1 
 
 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 * Jerry 7 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 J d 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 7 s 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 V 9 
 
 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 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 First 7 
 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 before 1 , 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. 
 
HOME USE 
 
 RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO ^ 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Received in Interlit 
 
 "ary Loan 
 
 
 APR 24 1 
 
 5fli 
 
 
 i> <j T | 
 ffHL PIH. ADD *} A 
 
 5OI 
 
 ioni 
 
 
 net* uiiu Arn o U 
 
 JUL 719828 
 
 lyoi 
 f\ 
 J 
 
 
 i. en, JUN 1 2 882 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .QCT 23 J9$ 
 
 ^\ 
 
 8 
 
 
 Ja(/i>^/ 
 
 3 
 
 
 AUTO. DIS 
 
 % I 
 ^. 
 
 
 0^18 ?Sc 
 
 8 
 
 
 KJ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 , 12/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY -U.C. BERKELEY