Wolf: The Lives of Jack London

by James L. Haley Coffin

  6 Bierce to Sterling, June 13, 1903, in Bierce, A Much Misunderstood Man, 104.

  7 Atherton, “Jack London in Boyhood Adventures,” quoted in Kingman, Pictorial Biography, 124. Absinthe is a liqueur derived in part from wormwood, an aromatic shrub.

  8 Bierce to Partington, July 31, 1892, in Bierce, A Much Misunderstood Man, 23- 24. Bierce issued the same ultimatum to Sterling: “I hope you will not set your feet in the dirty paths—leading nowhither—of social and political ‘reform.’ . . . If you do I shall have to part company with you.” Ibid., 81.

  9 Austin, Earth Horizon, 304; Genthe, As I Remember, 74.

  10 Ambrose Bierce to George Sterling, 13 June 1903, in Bierce, A Much Misunderstood Man, 104.

  11 Noel, Footloose in Arcadia, 200.

  12 See for a notable exception Kershaw, Jack London: A Life, which is noncommittal on the point but allows it as a possibility.

  13 Austin, Earth Horizon, 298.

  14 London to Sterling, June 1, 1905, in Letters, 1: 487-488. Writers who did attempt to gradate masculine affection into terms more subtle than the existing brutal stereotypes were almost universally muzzled. The British novelist E. M. Forster wrote his bravely themed Maurice not long after this period, and it could not be published for decades. See also Stasz, American Dreamers, 97, who correctly asserts the impropriety of “presentism,” in this instance the tendency to impose modern psychosexual mores on a time more than a century ago, when same-sex relationships were often the most important bonds one had, even extending, as she points out, to jealousy of a friend’s heterosexual relationships.

  15 Hedrick, Solitary Comrade, 185-186.

  16 Charmian Kittredge London Diary, July 15, 1905, Utah State University, Logan, quoted in Kershaw, Jack London, 147, and by many others.

  17 Bierce, A Much Misunderstood Man, 165.

  18 See London, “Brain Beaten by Brute Force,” San Francisco Examiner, September 10, 1905.

  19 London to Johns, December 8 and 14, 1904, in Letters, 1: 456-457.

  20 London to Bamford, May 8, 1905, in Letters 2: 480; commentary in Bamford, Mystery of Jack London, 185-186.

  21 London to Brett, December 5 and 22, 1904, in Letters, 1: 454-455, 458.

  22 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 49-52.

  23 London to Bamford, August 8, 1905, in Bamford, Mystery of Jack London, 194; there are minor differences between this and the version in Letters 1: 510.

  24 London to Brett, June 7, 1905, in Letters, 1: 489. At about the same time, London also tried to lean on Brett to publish a novel written by Ninetta Eames, but at this Brett bridled and refused.

  25 “All Gold Canyon” opened a theme London followed through on in such works as Burning Daylight in 1910 and The Valley of the Moon in 1913.

  26 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 33-34.

  CHAPTER 11

  1 London had never been blind to the value of publicity, having never regretted selling The Call of the Wild for a lump sum in exchange for Brett’s pledge of promotion. “Fame depends more on the amount of printer’s ink you spill in the headlines,” he told Joseph Noel, “than on what you put into your story.” Noel, Footloose in Arcadia, 149.

  2 London to Carrie Sterling, 15 & 29 September 1905, in Letters, 1:520-30.

  3 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 59.

  4 Quoted in Kingman, Pictorial Biography, 150-151, and others.

  5 Hendricks and Shepard, Jack London Reports, 253-258.

  6 Hartford Leader, January 27, 1906.

  7 Maule and Cain, The Man from Main Street, 89.

  8 Williams, Catholicism and the Modern Mind, 243-244.

  9 Fink, I-Mary, 116-117. If Austin was aware of the snub, she chose not to recall it in her memoirs. “One dined so very well at Coppa’s: such platefuls of fresh shrimps; such sand dabs and crisp salads; such almond tartlets and Dago red.” Austin, Earth Horizon, 297. Coppa’s was the choice of the bohemians in good part because of the proprietor’s generosity with credit extended to artists down on their luck. Failing a change of fortune and repayment, wall space was provided for painters to work off their debt. The famous frieze of black cats was created, over time, in just such a way by Martínez, an artist friendly with both Sterling and London. Genthe, As I Remember, 55, 64.

  10 Austin, Earth Horizon, 300. On the night London and Austin fought over her powers, it was Arnold Genthe who suggested it was time for all to be going, and he offered to see her home. The forest was black and there were no paths, but Austin refused the loan of a lantern. “Don’t you know I can see in the dark?” Her belief was unshaken, deep in the woods, by walking straight into a pine tree. Genthe, As I Remember , 75.

  11 Austin, Earth Horizon, 300, 304. This is an opinion seconded by Stasz, American Dreamers, 98. Regarding London’s drinking, his more strident defenders insist, for instance, that “there is no reliable record that anyone ever saw Jack drunk after . . . he was sixteen years old.” Kingman, Pictorial Biography, 190. That just is not true.

  12 Austin, Earth Horizon, 302. The great tenor Enrico Caruso was also staying in the Palace Hotel that night. Less psychic than Mary Austin, he fled the building in his nightshirt during the quake and swore he would never return to San Francisco.

  13 This and previous quotes from C. K. London, Book of Jack London, 2: 124- 125. The contractor, an Italian, later returned while the Londons were hosting Ed Winship, a Korean war correspondent with London, and his wife, Ida. Fearful of his own temper, London avoided him and had Charmian send him away.

  14 London to Coolbrith, December 15, 1906, University of California at Berkeley, in Letters 2: 650-651. Oddly, although they lived no great distance from each other and had many friends in common, London had not seen Coolbrith since those library days.

  15 London, “What Life Means to Me,” reprinted in London, Revolution and Other Essays.

  16 Honolulu Advertiser, June 8, 1907.

  17 Shields, Artists at Continent’s End, 192.

  18 Genthe, As I Remember, 75. The attribution to Browning was Genthe’s, but a computer search of the works of both Brownings yields no such verse.

  19 Sterling, “The Abalone Song,” quoted at www.ab2000.org.za.absong.html; www.abcamp.com/AbaloneSong.html, and others. Lesser member of The Crowd Opal Heron was said to have contributed the first verse. Genthe, As I Remember, 76; Shields, Artists at Continent’s End, 192, quoting Benediktsson, George Sterling, 37.

  20 Austin, Earth Horizon, 303.

  CHAPTER 12

  1 London to Stoddard, June 21, 1900, in Letters, 1: 195. Stoddard had been only twenty-one when he visited Tahiti for the first time, and later lived two stints in Hawaii. His letters to a friend from that first trip were published as Idyls, praised by William Dean Howells as “the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean.”

  2 Noel, Footloose in Arcadia, 191-193. For thoughts on Noel’s reliability and his motives in writing about London, see Chapter 1, note 18.

  3 O’Connor, Jack London, 248.

  4 Jack London Scrapbook 47-2, photo 05821, Huntington Library, copy lent by Lael Morgan.

  5 C. K. London, Book of Jack London, 2: 144

  6 London to Johnson, November 12, 1906, in Letters, 2: 629; Johnson, Through the South Seas with Jack London, 3, 7.

  7 London to Bailey Millard, August 13, 1906, and London to Cosgrave, August 21, 1906, both in Letters, 2: 600-601.

  8 London to Editor, Cosmopolitan, and London to Vance, both November 18, 1906, in Letters 2: 634-36.

  9 Johnson, Through the South Seas with Jack London, 53; C. K. London, Log of the Snark, 17.

  10 London to Brett, May 28, 1907, in Letters, 2: 685-687.

  11 London to Roscoe Eames, July 11, 1907, London to Ninetta Eames, May 28 and July 25, 1907, in Letters, 2: 687, 694-695, 700, 701n5. In one of the coats of whitewash in her biography, Charmian denied any trouble with Roscoe. Book of Jack London, 2: 144.

  12 Quoted in Tayman, The Colony, 1
98.

  13 Johnson, Through the South Seas with Jack London, 123.

  14 Quoted in Tayman, The Colony, 203. In the larger context of Hawaiian history, Queen Liliuokalani might have said the exact same things about Thurston.

  15 Stasz, Jack London’s Women, 123.

  16 Johnston, American Radical, 129.

  17 Johnston, American Radical, 129.

  18 London to George Sterling, October 31, 1908, in Letters, 2: 770-771. Charmian also used the letter as evidence to refute later charges from critics that the novel Adventure exaggerated the dangers in that part of the world. Book of Jack London, 2: 172-173.

  19 London to Bessie, October 27, 1908, in Letters 2: 762-768.

  20 Hendricks and Shepard, Jack London Reports, 259-262.

  21 “A Brief Explanation,” in Bamford, Mystery of Jack London, 222-223.

  22 London to Eliza Shepard, February 24, 1909, in Letters 2: 792.

  23 See Osa Johnson, I Married Adventure (Philadelphia and New York: J. P. Lippincott Co., 1940). Martin Johnson was killed in a commercial airplane crash in California in 1937; their travels and films are memorialized in the Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute.

  24 The Tymeric went on to tumultuous adventures of her own, grounded and nearly wrecked when a typhoon hit Hong Kong in 1937, and ultimately torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic in November 1940.

  CHAPTER 13

  1 London to Strunsky, January 21, 1900, in Letters, 1: 145. London of course did later develop a formidable facility at quarreling.

  2 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 184.

  3 Goldman, Living My Life, 467-469.

  4 Stasz, Jack London’s Women, 142-143.

  5 C. K. London, Book of Jack London, 2:184. Parsons was a woman of mixed race whose husband was hanged, probably unjustly, for his part in the Chicago Haymarket riot.

  6 London to Brett, May 5, 1910, in Letters, 2: 888-889. The serialization in the Herald ran for more than two months that summer.

  7 Quoted in Kershaw, A Life, 228.

  8 London to Fuller & Johnson Manufacturing Co., March 28, 1910; London to Brett, April 1, 1910, in Letters, 2: 881-882.

  9 Charmian to Fannie, July 1, 1910, quoted in Kershaw, A Life, 230.

  10 Hendricks and Shepard, Jack London Reports, 293-301.

  11 London to Samuels, open letter, July 29, 1910, in Letters, 2: 916-918; San Francisco Call, August 2, 1910.

  12 London to Charmian, July 29, 1910, in Letters, 2: 915-916.

  13 London to Henry W. Lanier, January 18, 1912, in Letters, 2:1063-1064.

  14 London to Eliza Shepard, February 12, 1912, in Letters, 2: 1067-1068.

  15 Stasz, Jack London’s Women, 110.

  16 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 230-232.

  17 London to Charmian, August 13, 1912, in Letters, 2: 1078-1079.

  18 Conrad to London, date illegible, archived online at www.huntington.org/LibraryDir/friends.htm/.

  19 Palmer, Nineteenth Century American Fiction on Screen, 211.

  20 London to Joan, October 11, 1913, Hendricks and Shepard, Letters from Jack London, 405-408, Letters, 1257-1260; Joan to London, October 28, 1913, in ibid., 1260n.

  21 St. Johns, Final Verdict, 356-357. Stasz, Jack London’s Women, 150, citing the same passage, depicts the scene entirely differently: “at the end of the ride, when Jack cruelly announced that he no longer wanted to be Adela’s godfather, she realized that instead of listening to her child’s wisdom, he treated her as he would have Joan.” This is a very surprising discrepancy from the cited text. Although Earl Rogers’s final years were lost to alcoholism until his premature death at fifty-two, his record in murder trials was 74 wins against 3 losses. He was said to have been the model for Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason character. See also Richard F. Snow, “Counsel for the Indefensible,” American Heritage, February-March 1987.

  CHAPTER 14

  1 Higgins, “Jack London on the Waterfront,” archived online at www.jacklondons.net/first_and_Last_chance.html.

  2 London to Fred Barry, June 26, 1913, quoted in Kingman, Pictorial Biography, 242.

  3 London to Michael McKenna, April 3, 1915, in Letters, 3: 1440.

  4 Quoted in O’Connor, Jack London, 356.

  5 London to Editor, Army and Navy Register, April 27, 1914, in Letters, 3: 1332.

  6 Davis, Adventures and Letters, 355.

  7 Hendricks and Shepard, Jack London Reports, 174-175.

  8 Davis, Adventures and Letters, 355-356.

  9 St. Johns, Final Verdict, 358-363.

  10 Ibid., 361.

  11 Bamford, Mystery of Jack London, 138-143.

  12 London to Connor, November 3, 1915, in Letters, 3: 1512-1513.

  13 Austin to London, October 26, 1915, and London to Austin, November 5, 1915 in Letters, 3: 1513-1514; Fink, I-Mary, 172-173. Austin survived the crisis to triumph in her later years. London’s irritation at the critical misunderstanding of Martin Eden had nettled him since the book first appeared. He inscribed a copy for his friend Fred Bamford, “And not one blessed reviewer has discovered that this book is an attack on individualism, that Martin Eden died because he was so utter an individualist that he was unaware of the needs of others, and that, therefore, when his illusions vanished, there was nothing for him for which to live.” G L. Bamford, Mystery of Jack London, 176-177. The misunderstanding continues to the present day with such mentions as “Jack London, whose fictional heroes were muscular autobiographical projections magnified by a Nietzschean lens.” John Seelye, War Games: Richard Harding Davis & The New Imperialism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003).

  14 London to Members of the Glen Ellen Socialist Labor Party, March 7, 1916, in Letters, 3: 1537-1538.

  15 C. K . London, Book of Jack London, 2: 337.

  16 London to Armine, June 30, 1916, quoted in Walker, ed., No Mentor But Myself , 161-162; Letters, 3: 1558-1559.

  17 Quoted in Hendricks and Shepard, Jack London Reports, 380-383.

  18 Noel, Footloose in Arcadia, 266.

  19 London to Charmian, November 19, 1912; London to Spiro Orfans, September 29 and October 19, 1916, in Letters, 2: 1100-1101, 3: 1579, 1593.

  20 London to Charles Brown, Jr., 28 July 1914, in Letters, 3:1357; London to A-No. 1, 28 October 1911, in Letters, 2:1047. After meeting on the road, Livingston over the years sent London hundreds of picture postcards from the places visited. See London to Robert E. McNamara, 25 August 1915, in Letters, 3:1492-93.

  21 London to Mrs. H. P. Agee, October 24, 1916, in Letters 3: 1596-1597; London to Sterling, October 28, 1916, in Letters 3: 1600.

  22 London to Smith, October 31, 1916, and London to Western Soil Bacteria Company, November 18, 1916, both in Letters 3: 1600-1601, 1603.

  23 London to Sisson, October 13, 1916 in Letters 3: 1589; London to Waldo Frank, November 5, 1916, in Letters 3: 1601-1602.

  24 London to Connor, November 20, 1916; London to Editor, Every Week, November 21, 1916; London to Joan, November 21, 1916; all in Letters 3: 1603-1604.

  25 See, e.g., “Publisher’s Preface,” The Sea-Wolf (Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1979), p. iii; Jack Lindsay, “Introduction,” The People of the Abyss (Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1977), p. 5, etc.

  26 Stone, Sailor on Horseback, 331. Stone later gained wide fame for his fictionalized portrayals of famous lives, an art form that freed him from following strict factuality when telling a good story. The London effort was his first book. While written as straight biography, it omits source notes and depicts Stone at the beginning of that long career in fiction. Subsequent careful scholars criticized the book for its frequent factual lapses. Stone’s characterization of “calculating the fatal dose” certainly adds an element deserving of inclusion in one of London’s own short stories but falls far short of establishing suicide.

  27 Walling, “Memoirs of Jack London,” quoted in Kingman, Pictorial Biography, 276.

  28 Jack London’s “Credo,” with Commentary by Clarice Stasz. http:/
/london.sonoma.edu/credo.html, quoting Irving Shepard, Jack London’s Tales of Adventure , vii.

  BOOKS BY JACK LONDON

  The Son of the Wolf (Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1900). Stories included: “The White Silence,” “The Son of the Wolf,” “The Men of Forty Mile,” “In a Far Country,” “To the Man on the Trail,” “The Priestly Prerogative,” “The Wisdom of the Trail,” “The Wife of a King,” “An Odyssey of the North.”