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 husband, who eyed me with surprise and some misgiving, looking 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 seasick woman! But somehow, I seem to love you more than ever before—I don't know why, unless because each new environment, 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 collapsed. A moment's pause, and Jack picked himself up and walked aft without a word. He did not return. Inquisitive, I went to investigate, and halted petrified to behold my hardened tar, hanging, green-pallid and audible, over the stern-rail, thoroughly seasick for the initial time

in his nautical history. And in the years to come, he accepted 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 blessing. 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 English "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 indolent friends loafing genially about. But clearest of all re-

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 civilization 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 "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 "insomniast," dared to tuck away; and three long hours afterwards, I, the insomniast, slumbered peacefully. "Why, our coffee cures insomnia," crooned Barbara Francis, as she snuggled me into a downy four-poster from "Home." "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 Ranch 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 fragrant 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

couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile," Jack quoted, coming 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 satisfaction 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 bejeweled, 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

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 sunniest, 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 underlying 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 "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 reminded 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 Café 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

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 luxurious Spanish interiors and balconies across the narrow street, where señoras and señoritas 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 moment 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 Spaniard, 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 intervals, to make notes for a novel which I now realize never was written—"The Flight of the Duchess."

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 Cabañas 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 entertainment 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 afternoon 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 Shinnecock for Miami. Jack, who from his omniverous reading knew considerable about almost 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 snakeskins, 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

two. On the return cruise he became rapidly worse, so that I was up all night with him, and in the morning sent numerous 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. "Besides, 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 patient 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 explanation. 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.

The foregoing is by way of preparing the reader for receiving into New York City a white, hollow-eyed, very miserable Jack London, burdened with an almost insupportable number of engagements to fulfil in half the days he had originally alloted them. The first was a socialist meeting 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 "publishers were trying to throw money in the form of advances on unperformed work, seemed to have unbalanced his preceptions and sent him reasoning in a circle like that of certain young German philosophers.

"It's all a madness," he would gird. "'Why should anybody do any thing?' 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 smashup, 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

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 theatrical 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 unventilated 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 spontaneity 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?"

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?" asked the white-maned poet, his splendid dark eyes bent upon the younger man.

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

Followed a discussion, Mr. Markham appreciating

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 The 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: "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 correspondence, that he had been greatly entertained, upon his return, to notice that wherever he had queried his own spelling, 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 "Revolution"), 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 unburied dead, its monstrous selfishness and sodden materialism."

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

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 committee 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, including members of the Intercollegiate Society, had held an informal 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 delightful 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 Professors, although apprehensive of Jack's "radical tendencies," was yet reasonable: "Yale is a University," enounced he, "and not a monastery. Besides, Jack London 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

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 London 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 reference to Socialism would be merely incidental." Jack's friend, by the way, in his spirited account attires the speaker, 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 professors 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 applaud during the entire length of the lecture." And the Socialist "bouncers" who had been surreptitiously sta-

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 Socialist 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 intellectual 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 rarely raised his voice even to emphasize a point. His emphasis he got by reiteration.

As for his countenance, in a photograph taken with

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 differently 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 Harvard 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 constitution" 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 personally 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

some time to come. He, who always maintained his unfitness for physical martyrdom: I'd tell anything under torture!"—thus sacrificed unflinchingly for his beliefs, martyred 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 something 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 section 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 perquisites 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.

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