1911

FROM Glen Ellen to the Coast, and north to Bandon, Oregon, was our route; thence inland to Medford and Ashland, and southward through the interior—fifteen hundred miles altogether. Jack wrote forenoons before starting 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

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 association, and an extra glass or two. When he would return, there was a more than common glisten in his always lustrous 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 concerning 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-

prices: Prince, his sugar-tongue hanging out on all occasions, Prince the "Love-Horse," Jack called him, with his laughing eye and friendly hoof-shake and the pocket-seeking 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 Rabbit, 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 Reyes, 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 Rosa, and Sebastopol where one sees Luther Burbank's flowering and fruiting fields, to Bodega Corners; Duncan's Mills; Cazadero; Fort Ross, 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 River, where deer come down to drink, to Dyerville. From this section the tourist may cut inland to the Hoopah Indian Reservation. This we did, by automobile and saddle, coming out down the Trinity and Klamath Rivers in a dugout with Indian canoemen to Requa by the sea; next, to Fortuna, with fishing and hunting and old Indians along the way; Eureka; Trinidad; 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 River Corners, and into Oregon, to Colgrove's Mountain Ranch; Laurence's on Pistol River; Gold Beach, on Rogue River; Port Orford; Langlois; then to Bandon, Coos County, whence we struck inland to Coquille; Rock Creek; Murray's, Roseburg; Can-

yonville; Wolf Creek; Grant's Pass; Medford, with a motor trip to that marvel, Crater Lake; Ashland; down into California again,—Montague; Weed; driving within sight of grand Mt. Shasta; Dunsmuir; Le Moyne; Kennett; Redding; Red 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 houseboat, 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 sailboat'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

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 Ranch, 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 capstone to a series of vexations to Jack, ending in one of his superb "disgusts" with the universe of which I was an

important part; and he brought up the Eureka incident.

"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! I've 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 delightedly 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.

"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 walloping 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, illustrate how simple was his initial preparation:

The material for the Christ novel above referred to Jack had been compiling for years; but in the Christ episode of "The Star Rover" he concentrated his long-sought data. When he read me, aboard the Roamer, 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 shining, 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 mailsack—a substantial leather one bought before we sailed on the Snark arrived at the back porch, and Nakata brought it to me to sort tbe << Table of Contents. In the half-hour before dinner, Jack had glanced over the daily paper, read his letters, indicated replies on some of them for my guidance, and

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 endeavored to have his ten pages of hand-written manuscript transcribed—an average of two and a half typewritten letter-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 another 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 portions, before his own was tasted he would read aloud newspaper 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 knowledge 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, mentally, 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.

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 battlefield."

They were eyes that look into one, and through and beyond—as if what they saw on the surface, in one s own, led his into the deeps behind, into the brain, conscious and unconscious 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 narrowing 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 anything," 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

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 believe anything till I'm shown. I'm parsimonious!" "But to get back: As I was saying when I was so rudely interrupted," with a twinkle; "I'm afraid I was always an extremist; 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: "Remember, dear, not only in being true to myself am I true to you, but before I knew you I was

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 quarreled 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 splendidly 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 feeling most unusual for his years. And still again: "What a warmth there was about this dear fellow! Sunshine followed 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, coupled with such doubt of the purely dreamy optimistic or the unproven."

To the youngsters of his race, entranced with his genuineness 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."

So much for his own countrymen; and how I wish the English, in greater numbers, could have known him personally. 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 memory. Some one at table used the contraction "Frisco," 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 symbolized 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:

Near the end of the midday meal, Nakata would lay beside 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, swinging 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 apprehensive, men and women and children, enlarging to them upon the character and idiosyncracies of each horse. A neighboring 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 everybody 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 cowboy 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 particular his own Buffalo experience, had for years made him eager to give a chance to those unfortunate enough to have

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 ameliorating 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 connection 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 Monterey County, of some one's lapdog—"Fluffy Ruffles!"

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 voyage. 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":

From "South Sea Tales," in the fall:

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 Suffrage," 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:

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. Enroute 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 Connor, his duties including those of Provost Marshal of the beautiful, romantic city.

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 I contemplate with more pleasure than that 1912 winter in '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 unexpected 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 appreciated. 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 concerning 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

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 dangerous. 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 valuing 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. "Rome 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:

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

"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, pirooting, 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.

Referring 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 Oakland, he ran across a man who knew an old Klondike acquaintance, 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

and puzzlement in every line and movement. To cut the tale short, it appeared that the lady had been keeping company 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,' cordially, to whoever came to the door, and get inside, talking 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 summoned—" he broke off in a giggle that was the only familiar 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 quizzically, 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 extreme, unnormal state. So ho resumed his "pirooting"—I really do not know how to spell the word, and the dictionary 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 shaking as with violent ague:

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

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

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 Robert Louis Stevenson, who is reputed to have accepted 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 precinct 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. Steinmetz, 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,

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 cautiously 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 energy, 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 business with publishers. He had left the Macmillans, and contracted 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

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 sojourn in New York was Michael Monahan; and Jack and Richard Le Gallienne got together most pleasantly. Several afternoons were set aside for receiving callers. Alex ander Berkman came to see Jack, for the purpose of enlisting 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 radical differences, it was repudiated by Berkman and his associate 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 Tribune 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 people 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 Ranch 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

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 always the same, and you see and understand it better when you are standing outside the crowd."

« << Table of Contents