To Mother Girl – Signed Daddy Boy

Papeete, Tahiti 1908 – to Bessie (Mother-Girl), the mother of his two daughters. Evidently, during the long steamer voyage to the south seas, Jack is re-evaluating his agreement to sell his Oakland property to Bessie and Charlie (her better half). Not wanting them to profit immediately by selling the property (he gave them a really good deal for his daughters’ sake) he communicates that a contract will be drawn up by his representatives whereby the property shall only be liquidated following the twenty-first birthday of his youngest daughter. Jack signs it affectionately, “Daddy Boy”. Each page 6″ X 9 1/2″. Fine.

November 1907 – A US newspaper published an article that the Snark had gone down and Jack London was dead. Believing the story, a bank had taken possession of the house where Jack’s mother, Flora, was living. Jack also learned that Ninetta Eames was mismanaging his business affairs—he was nearly out of money. He knew he must return home to straighten things out.

January 6, 1908 To George Brett – Macmillan Publishing: “I am On board the S.S. Mariposa, bound for San Francisco. I shall only be in San Francisco eight (8) days, sailing from San Francisco on Monday morning, February 3, on the S.S. Mariposa, for Tahiti, where we rejoin the Snark, and continue our voyage around the world.”

On January 13, 1908, Jack and Charmian left Papeete Tahiti on the SS Mariposa, a steamship that ran between Tahiti and California.

Jack had heard that Bess was considering remarrying. Now he began to feel possessive of the children he had not seen in over ten months. After several days of frantic dealings with creditors and local banks, and a tense meeting with Ninetta Eames, he went to see his daughters, and told Bess that he would continue to provide for them.

This letter was written on the return trip to Tahiti after he had met with Bessie in Oakland. Jack was depressed, drinking heavily, serious dental pain, along with the general effects of the Yaws and the mercury-based salve he was using.

“On the return journey to Tahiti, again aboard the Mariposa, Jack spent most of his time at the poker table and fighting off a bad bout of the flu. His visit to California, although it had lasted just eight days, had resurrected the misanthrope in him. Now he mooched about the ship and began to drink heavily. So far in the voyage, their setbacks had forged an ever more intimate bond between Jack and Charmian. She had risen to every challenge and become an indispensable member of the crew, so hardy and adaptable that she had fast become a first-rate sailor. But now, as the Mariposa cruised at full steam back to Tahiti, she sensed a growing distance between her and Jack. His long sickness’ had returned. They argued about his drinking and she burst into tears several times. ‘I think Jack is sick sometimes, mentally, or he wouldn’t do as he does,’ she noted in her journal.”

In the book he was writing while on the SS Mariposa, Martin Eden, he supplied a dark, unhappy ending for the hero, who kills himself by jumping off the SS Mariposa.

A psychologist would have a field day with the errors – cross-outs and Freudian slips in this letter- Jack was obviously drunk, but lucid when he wrote this letter.

Very rare letter – Not many letters in existence from Jack to Bessie.