by Rob Loughran
I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather
That my spark should burn out in a brilliant
Blaze than it be stifled by dryrot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
Every atom of me in magnificent glow,
Than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live,
Not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
—Jack London
Jack London did use his time. In his 41 years (1876-1916) he sailed the South Seas, prospected for gold, hopped freight trains, worked as a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico, married twice, fathered two children, embraced (then discarded) Socialism, and wrote over 40 books. But behind the legend of Jack London—children’s author, Alaskan adventurer, sailor, hero to the common man—lies a complex, pained and ultimately more interesting man.
The saga of the real Gentleman Jack London involves adultery, grandiose dreams, alcoholism, and the possibility of suicide.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS?
Jack’s life began under less than ideal circumstances. Perhaps Jack
was destined to become one of America’s most widely read authors since the first mention of his name in print was while he was in utero. The San Francisco Chronicle (which in the 1870’s resembled a locally flavored National Enquirer) ran the headline: “Driven from Home for Refusing to Destroy Her Unborn Child—A Chapter of Heartlessness and Domestic Misery.” The headline referred to Jack’s mother, Flora Wellman and his biological father “Doctor” William Chaney. Flora and the Doctor of Astrology met in 1874 and after a year of living together unwed, Flora ecstatically informed the charlatan that she was pregnant. Chaney insisted that she abort the unwanted child. When Flora refused Chaney sold everything in their house and left for Oregon. The distraught Flora borrowed a pistol and shot herself in the head. The suicide attempt resulted in a minor flesh wound and Jack London was born January 12, 1876.
Years later Jack discovered not only his birth announcement but the headline quoted above. He located and questioned Chaney who claimed he was sterile and another of Flora’s lovers must be his father. Nine months following Jack’s birth Flora married John London. Both John, a widower who lived with his two youngest daughters and Flora thought they had made wonderful choices in mates and settled into a comfortable household routine. However Jack’s written recollections stress how poor, nearly destitute, his family had been. From John Barleycorn: I had been born poor. Poor I had lived. I had gone hungry on occasion. I had never had toys or playthings like other children. My first memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter. And then it had been only one little undershirt.
Jack’s remarks about his impoverished youth infuriated Flora. Poverty certainly wasn’t the case. Jack had toy-boats to play with; his step-father had a family boat upon which John London would take Jack and his boyhood friend, Frank Atherton, sailing and fishing on San Francisco Bay. Frank (who lived in a shed and was taken out of school by his family to work in a Sacramento basket factory) cherished the memories of visiting the London household for dinner and enjoying steak, potatoes and vegetables. Jack’s daughter Joan wrote in Jack London and His Daughters, “Out of his awareness from babyhood of the constant struggle, not to get along so much as to get ahead, developed his firm but erroneous conviction that he had grown up in the midst of privation and want. They lived frugally, it is true, but the necessities and many of the comforts were never lacking.” Joan said Jack possessed “A faculty for absorbing the experiences of others and living them in imagination.”
And then, asserted Jack, it had been only one little undershirt. When it was soiled I had to return to the awful home-made things until it was washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it without any outer garment. For the first time I mutinied against my mother—mutinied myself into hysteria, until she let me wear the store undershirt so all the world could see.
NORTH TO ALASKA
Perhaps the most persistent and famous of Jack’s public personas is that of “Master of the Yukon.” Even though his writing career began with stories of the great Alaskan wilderness, and Jack London
perpetuated his image as an Arctic adventurer and prospector, Jack spent a little more than half-a-year in Alaska; most of that time huddled in a frozen cabin or discussing Socialism in a frontier bar. Jack wrote of his Alaskan experience “…my sister and her husband grubstaked me into the Klondike. It was the first gold rush into that region, the early fall rush of 1897. I was twenty-one years old, and in splendid physical condition. I remember, at the end of the twenty-eight mile portage across Chilkoot from Dyea Beach to Lake Linderman, I was packing up with the Indians and outpacking many an Indian. The last pack into Linderman was three miles. I back-tripped it four times a day, and on each forward trip carried one hundred and fifty pounds. This means over the worst trails I traveled twenty-four miles, twelve of which were under a burden of one hundred fifty pounds.”
However, the Klondiker Edward Morgan said of Jack London, “I believe that he staked a claim but I never saw him working one, never met him on the trail, and do not remember ever having seen him except in some Dawson bar….It seemed to me that whenever I saw him at the bar he was always in conversation with some veteran sourdough or noted character in the life of Dawson. And how he did talk.”
Jack London also had the dubious distinction of being taken to task by the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote: “Take the chapter from Jack London’s White Fang that tells the story of a fight between the great northern wolf, White Fang, and a bulldog. Reading this I can’t believe that Mr. London knows much about wolves, and I am certain that he knows nothing about their fighting, or as a realist he would not tell this tale….Men who have visited the haunts of the wild beasts, who have seen them and have learned at least something of their ways resent such gross falsifying of nature’s record.”
Although he may never have lifted a shovel to work a claim, Jack certainly struck gold during his half-year in Alaska. He garnered the raw material that became literary gold. His classics Call of the Wild and White Fang as well as The Son of the Wolf, Brown Wolf and other Stories, Children of the Frost, and A Daughter of the Snows deal with arctic themes. John Perry wrote in Jack London: An American Myth: “Jack London exploited the Klondike’s white wilderness, it’s cult of the cold, frightful sense of the unseen, and remoteness from civilization in handsful of sensational short stories, leading people to believe he recorded his experiences.”
In reality Jack was bitter and resentful of the Klondike stating: “I brought nothing back from the Klondike but my scurvy….I’m making up for it though. I’m giving the public what it likes to think Alaska is, and I’m getting gold for it. Writing is my stake.”
JOHN BARLEYCORN
There has always been a great deal of confusion and controversy about Jack’s drinking. Several biographers have painted him as not much more than a fall-down alcoholic. But the fact remains that he did die at the relatively young age of 41 from kidney failure. His kidney problems may have been caused by the mercury-based medication (Salversan 606) he was taking for his venereal disease, but Jack wrote quite often, usually with unapologetic bravado, about his drinking: “By truly heroic perseverance, I finally forced myself to write the daily thousand words without the spur of John Barleycorn. But all the time I wrote I was keenly aware of the craving for a drink. And as soon as the morning’s work was done, I was out of the house and away down-town to get my first drink. Merciful goodness!—if John Barleycorn could get sway over me, a non-alcoholic, what must be the suffering of the true alcoholic, battling against the organic demands of his chemistry while those closest to him sympathize little, understand less, and despise
and deride him!”
Jack went long stretches (usually at sea) completely sober. He also built a farm, tramped around the world and was a productive and prolific writer. Was he truly alcoholic or was it just bravado, hype, and his own need to be a “Man’s Man”? We’ll never know, but his contemporary Oliver Maddox Hueffer succinctly explains Jack’s relationship to booze, “Among the apocryphal legends attached to his name, and founded very possibly on his own statements, was that of his almost superhuman drunkenness. That at one time or another he drank too much I can believe—certainly in all the time of our acquaintance he never showed any sign of it. He was by no means a teetotaler; but I never saw him drunk. Nor did he boast of his drinking prowess in my presence.”
WIVES AND WOMEN
Jack London was introduced to his second wife, Charmian Kittredge by Charmian’s Aunt, Netta Eames. Charmian had seen Jack at their house on an earlier occasion when Jack stopped to discuss a business matter with a local reviewer. Like most people in the San Francisco Bay Area, she had certainly heard of Oakland’s Boy Socialist and rising author. But Charmian recalls being repulsed by Jack’s shabby appearance and missing teeth. She wasn’t looking forward to allotting any of her precious free time to meet the rogue. But Charmian was towed along to Young’s restaurant to meet Jack. He’d exchanged his ripped cap and sweater for an ill-fitting suit. They fell into discussion, finding common ground in their love of Rudyard Kipling. Later that week Jack stopped by Netta’s house with a Socialist friend. Jack abandoned Netta and his friend and found Charmian playing Chopin. Jack wrote a friend, “Have made the acquaintance of Charmian Kittredge, a charming girl who writes book reviews and who possesses a pretty little library wherein I have found all the late books which the library are afraid to circulate.”
Jack proposed a date to Charmian that appealed to both their sense of whimsy and non-conformism: a ride in the Oakland hills. Jack on bicycle; Charmian on horseback. The 29 year old, never married woman agreed to accompany the 24 year old rising-star-author on this lark. The date was set—Saturday.
But in a letter to Netta later that week Jack revealed that he had to break his date with Charmian.
Why?
Because he was marrying Bess Maddern that Saturday.
Bess Maddern, whom Jack had met years earlier, represented everything Jack sought in his ideal “Scientific” mate. As Bess would be linking her fate to the author, Jack would become grounded by the influence of a solid, steady, capable woman. The idea of love wasn’t even entertained: love would merely introduce romanticism and sentimentality into Jack’s conception of a Scientific Marriage: Love is a disorder of mind and body, and is produced by passion under the stimulus of imagination. We see it every day, for love is the most perfectly selfish thing in the universe. During the time romantic love runs its course in an individual, that individual is in a diseased, abnormal, irrational condition….In all marriages love— passionate, romantic love—must disappear, to be replaced by conjugal affection or by nothing.
Jack London had decided to propose to Bess after he saw her on a ladder hanging drapes at his mother’s house. He knew it was a hasty decision but “reasoned scientifically” that it was the best possible match. They were married April 7, 1900, the same day Jack’s The Son of the Wolf was released. Almost immediately there was strife in the marriage. Bess and Jack were constitutionally incompatible. Bess’ awkward love-making technique caused Jack to send Bess to Charmian’s Aunt Netta for a few sexual pointers.
Netta’s tutelage must have helped because Bess became pregnant and gave birth on January 15, 1901. But the birth didn’t please Jack: it was a girl. Jack, who had expected a son, hadn’t decided on a name for his daughter and for two days referred to his child as “It”, studiously refusing to call her even “Baby.”
She was finally named “Joan” after Joan of Arc. Joan London
wrote, years later, “I was forgiven, I was accepted, I was Joan.”
As Jack’s career and celebrity skyrocketed his marriage soured. London scholar John Perry wrote, “London resented Bessie’s refusal to grant him total sexual freedom, a concession Charmian later made.”
“She’s devoted to purity,” Jack wrote. “When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me….Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won’t let me in the same room with her if she can help it. She wants to make me a house animal that won’t go anywhere without her approval. And worse than anything else she’s converting that bungalow into a prison. I don’t want to live in a prison.”
And so Jack left in 1902.
Although Bess was pregnant with their second daughter Jack traveled to cover the Boer War in South Africa. Although the assignment was canceled Jack remained in England to research and write The People of the Abyss.
He returned home to his disarrayed and unhappy household to pound out his 1000 words a day. During this time Jack completed, in growing disenchantment with Bess and his daughters, his two most famous works, The Sea Wolf and Call of the Wild. He also collaborated with Anna Strunsky on The Kempton-Wace Letters. This novel in letters, perhaps an attempt to shore up his failing Scientific Marriage, Jack takes the role of Herbert Wace who argues for Reason; Anna Strunsky argues for Love in the role of Dane Kempton.
Then followed an extended assignment in Korea to cover the Japanese-Russian War. He returned and was greeted on the docks by a process server from the Alameda County Superior Court. Bess had filed for divorce, naming Anna Strunsky in the suit. Jack responded, “That is sheer rot. I cannot imagine how such a report has originated. It seems hardly probable that my wife started it, for she knows that it is absolutely untrue. Outside of the time that we were thrown together as collaborators on the Kempton-Wace Letters I have seen very little of Miss Strunsky, as she and I have been away from San Francisco a great deal. We have not even corresponded, except on matters pertaining to our book.”
But Gentleman Jack had conveniently forgotten two items: The San Francisco Chronicle had reported: “…divorce proceedings were threatened about two years ago, when it is said, Mrs. London accidentally found Miss Strunsky sitting in her husband’s lap.”
The other forgotten item?
In May 1902, Jack had asked Miss Anna Strunsky to marry him, suggesting that they run off and live in Australia.
Charmian Kittredege became Mrs. Jack London in 1905, two years after Jack London had finally left his wife and daughters. Charmian shocked people in the Bay Area by wearing pants and refusing to ride her horse side-saddle. She also bucked the conventions of the day by learning to type, and working in an office with men. Much more than a passive wife, as most historians have painted her, Charmian contributed greatly to Jack’s fame and success. She edited much of his work and served as a feminine archetype for many of his female characters.
Jack referred to her lovingly as “Mate-Woman” (Jack called Bess “Mother-Girl”; she called him “Daddy-Boy”.) Sonoma County writer Clarice Stasz, in her book American Dreamers: Charmian and Jack London said: “Yet it is hard to imagine he would have tried and accomplished so much without the influence of Charmian. Certainly there would have been no sailing to Pacific Isles. There would have been another woman, to be sure, but not likely one who could master his mercurial temperament so well, who would provide the strength he needed to find his direction. Certainly Charmian’s life would have been duller and less useful without his invigorating pull.”
Charmian herself wrote, after Jack’s death: “I think the difference between others and ourselves was that Jack and I knew what we wanted, and in unison overtook in spite of colossal odds from all sides; while the others 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.”
THE MYSTERY OF WOLF HOUSE
Perhaps
even more so than his writing, Wolf House symbolized Jack London’s life. Jack began planning his Mansion-Lodge in the redwoods of Glen Ellen around the turn of the century. He intended the structure to last, as a symbol of his life and struggles, for 1000 years.
And now to my own house beautiful, he wrote in1906, which I shall build some seven to ten years from now. I have a few general ideas about it. It must be honest in construction, material, and appearance. If any feature of it, despite my efforts, shall tell lies, I shall remove the feature. Utility and beauty must be indissolubly wedded. Construction and decoration must be one. If the particular details keep true to the general ideas, all will be well.
The “particular details” of Wolf House are impressive. It is built on a huge monolithic concrete foundation; big enough to support a modern 40 story skyscraper. London thought that his house could be made earthquake proof by building it on a slab of concrete big enough to move with the surroundings during an earthquake. Wolf House was constructed of five local materials: redwood, volcanic rock, blue slate, boulders, and concrete. The rock wasn’t finished, it was set into the foundation exactly as quarried and the redwoods were used with their bark on.
The Wolf House was designed, to Jack’s exacting specifications, by famed San Francisco architect Albert Farr. Its 15,000 square feet included 26 rooms and nine fireplaces. Despite the abundant space the Wolf House was built to accommodate only Jack and Charmian. Jack (who had written in tents, boxcars, boats, bungalows, and a cell at the Erie County Penitentiary) now had a huge workroom, 19 x 40 feet. His library, directly beneath his writing room was the same size. The two rooms, connected by a spiral staircase, were isolated from the main house, affording privacy and almost complete seclusion.