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Jack London: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Jack London
John Griffith London was born on the 12th of January 1876 in San Francisco, but the identity of his biological father remains one of the most enduring mysteries of American literary history. His mother, Flora Wellman, was a music teacher and spiritualist who had been living with an astrologer named William Chaney when she became pregnant. Chaney later claimed he was impotent and could not be the father, a denial that devastated London when he discovered the truth in 1897. Instead of a stable family life, London was sent to be wet-nursed by Virginia Prentiss, a former slave who became his primary source of love and affection. The family moved frequently across the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school. Despite the family's working-class status, London was largely self-educated, finding his literary seed in Ouida's novel Signa at the age of eight. He spent his youth studying at Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, a port-side bar where he met the sailors and adventurers who would later populate his fiction. By 1893, he had signed on to a sealing schooner bound for Japan, and by 1894, he had spent thirty days in the Erie County Penitentiary for vagrancy. These early years of poverty, travel, and struggle forged the man who would become one of the first American authors to earn a large fortune from writing.
The Klondike Crucible
On the 12th of July 1897, at the age of twenty-one, London sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush, a journey that would define his career and destroy his health. The harsh conditions of the Yukon left him with scurvy, causing his gums to swell and leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face bore marks that reminded him of the struggles he faced in the goldfields. While living in Dawson, he was sheltered by Father William Judge, whose facility provided food and medicine to London and others. These struggles inspired his short story To Build a Fire, which many critics assess as his best work. The landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond and Louis Whitford Bond, educated at Yale and Stanford respectively. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond, was a wealthy mining investor who was active in Republican politics. London left Oakland with socialist leanings and returned to California to become an activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work trap was to get an education and sell his brains. He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and hoped to beat the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working to get published, a struggle described in his novel Martin Eden. His first published story since high school was To the Man On Trail, which The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for. He came close to abandoning his writing career until The Black Cat accepted his story A Thousand Deaths and paid him forty dollars, the first money he ever received for a story.
When was Jack London born and where did he grow up?
John Griffith London was born on the 12th of January 1876 in San Francisco and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland. He completed public grade school in Oakland despite his family moving frequently across the region.
What happened to Jack London during the Klondike Gold Rush?
Jack London sailed to the Klondike Gold Rush on the 12th of July 1897 and suffered from scurvy which caused his gums to swell and led to the loss of his four front teeth. The harsh conditions of the Yukon left him with constant pain in his hip and leg muscles and marks on his face that reminded him of the struggles he faced in the goldfields.
Who did Jack London marry and when did he divorce his first wife?
Jack London married Elizabeth Mae Bessie Maddern on the 7th of April 1900 and divorced her on the 11th of November 1904 after living apart since July 1903. He later married Charmian Kittredge in 1905 after their relationship developed from a friendship into romance.
What was Jack London's political stance and which party did he join?
Jack London wrote from a socialist viewpoint and joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 1896 before leaving to join the Socialist Party of America in 1901. He ran unsuccessfully as the Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland in 1901 and 1905 while touring the country lecturing on socialism.
How did Jack London die and what was the official cause of death?
Jack London died on the 22nd of November 1916 in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch from uremia following acute renal colic. Recent scholarship confirms he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose rather than suicide as older sources claimed.
Where is Jack London buried and what is the status of his ranch today?
Jack London's ashes are buried on his property in Glen Ellen, California, next to some pioneer children under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House. The buildings and property are now preserved as Jack London State Historic Park and are protected as a National Historic Landmark.
In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post for seven hundred fifty dollars and the book rights to Macmillan. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success, making London one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity. While living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt in Oakland, he met poet George Sterling, and they became best friends. In his letters, London addressed Sterling as Greek, owing to Sterling's aquiline nose and classical profile, and he signed them as Wolf. London was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon. In later life, London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of fifteen thousand volumes, which he referred to as the tools of his trade. The Crowd, a radical literary group in San Francisco, gathered at restaurants and later at Jack London's home on Wednesdays. The group included George Sterling, Anna Strunsky, Ambrose Bierce, and Joaquin Miller. London married Elizabeth Mae Bessie Maddern on the 7th of April 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published. They were not married out of love but from friendship and a belief that they would produce sturdy children. Their first child, Joan, was born on the 15th of January 1901, and their second, Bessie Becky, on the 20th of October 1902. The marriage was strained, and by 1903, the couple were close to separation. On the 24th of July 1903, London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904, London and Bessie negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on the 11th of November 1904.
The War Correspondent
In early 1904, London accepted an assignment from the San Francisco Examiner to cover the Russo-Japanese War, arriving in Yokohama on the 25th of January 1904. He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki but released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom. After traveling to Korea, he was again arrested for straying too close to the border with Manchuria without official permission and sent back to Seoul. Released again, London was permitted to travel with the Imperial Japanese Army to the border and observe the Battle of the Yalu. He asked William Randolph Hearst, the owner of the San Francisco Examiner, to be allowed to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army, where he felt that restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe. However, before this could be arranged, he was arrested for a third time in four months, this time for assaulting his Japanese assistants, whom he accused of stealing the fodder for his horse. Released through the personal intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt, London departed the front in June 1904. On the 18th of August 1904, London went with his close friend, the poet George Sterling, to Summer High Jinks at the Bohemian Grove. London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities. Other noted members of the Bohemian Club during this time included Ambrose Bierce, Gelett Burgess, Allan Dunn, John Muir, Frank Norris, and Herman George Scheffauer. Beginning in December 1914, London worked on The Acorn Planter, A California Forest Play, to be performed as one of the annual Grove Plays, but it was never selected. It was described as too difficult to set to music. London published The Acorn Planter in 1916.
The Rancher And The Rebel
After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. London had been introduced to Kittredge in 1900 by her aunt Netta Eames, who was an editor at Overland Monthly magazine in San Francisco. The two met prior to his first marriage but became lovers years later after Jack and Bessie London visited Wake Robin, Netta Eames' Sonoma County resort, in 1903. London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him. The two developed a friendship, as Charmian, Netta, her husband Roscoe, and London were politically aligned with socialist causes. At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior. Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match. Their time together included numerous trips, including a 1907 cruise on the yacht Snark to Hawaii and Australia. Many of London's stories are based on his visits to Hawaii, the last one for ten months beginning in December 1915. The couple also visited Goldfield, Nevada, in 1907, where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords. In 1905, London purchased a ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. He wrote that next to his wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to him. He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end. He wrote a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to his magnificent estate. London spent eighty thousand dollars to build a stone mansion called Wolf House on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, it was destroyed by fire. The ranch is now a National Historic Landmark and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park.
The Socialist And The Scoundrel
London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience. As London explained in his essay How I Became a Socialist, his views were influenced by his experience with people at the bottom of the social pit. His optimism and individualism faded, and he vowed never to do more hard physical work than necessary. He wrote that his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn. He often closed his letters Yours for the Revolution. London joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 1896. In the same year, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the twenty-year-old London's giving nightly speeches in Oakland's City Hall Park, an activity he was arrested for a year later. In 1901, he left the Socialist Labor Party and joined the new Socialist Party of America. He ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland in 1901, receiving two hundred forty-five votes, and in 1905, improving to nine hundred eighty-one votes. He toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906 and published two collections of essays about socialism: War of the Classes in 1905 and Revolution, and other Essays in 1906. London shared common concerns among many European Americans in California about Asian immigration, described as the yellow peril. He used the latter term as the title of a 1904 essay. This theme was also the subject of a story he wrote in 1910 called The Unparalleled Invasion. Presented as an historical essay set in the future, the story narrates events between 1976 and 1987, in which China, with an ever-increasing population, is taking over and colonizing its neighbors with the intention of taking over the entire Earth. The western nations respond with biological warfare and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases. On his fears about China, he admits at the end of The Yellow Peril that it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism. By contrast, many of London's short stories are notable for their empathetic portrayal of Mexican, Asian, and Hawaiian characters. London's war correspondence from the Russo-Japanese War, as well as his unfinished novel Cherry, show he admired much about Japanese customs and capabilities. London's writings have been popular among the Japanese, some of whom believe he portrayed them positively. In 1996, after the City of Whitehorse, Yukon, renamed a street in honor of London, protests over London's alleged racism forced the city to change the name of Jack London Boulevard back to Two-mile Hill. Shortly after boxer Jack Johnson was crowned the first black world heavyweight champ in 1908, London pleaded for a white candidate to come forward to defeat Johnson. Nat Fleischer, a boxing writer, reported that London told Jim Jeffries it's up to you, to save the white race. The phrase about saving the white race was an embellishment by Fleischer, but it is clear from London's writings that he preferred that a white boxer win the title of champion. The term great white hope in boxing is often attributed to London, but it was first used in contexts outside of boxing in the 19th century, and in the 1960s to refer to Jeffries. London supported eugenics, believing the future belongs to eugenics and will be determined by the practice of eugenics. Although this led some to argue for forced sterilization of criminals or those deemed feeble-minded, London did not express this extreme. His short story Told in the Drooling Ward is from the viewpoint of a surprisingly astute feebled-minded person. London advised his collaborator Anna Strunsky during preparation of The Kempton-Wace Letters that he would take the role of eugenics in mating, while she would argue on behalf of romantic love. Love won the argument.
The Final Voyage
London died on the 22nd of November 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike. Additionally, during travels on the Snark, he and Charmian picked up unspecified tropical infections and diseases, including yaws. At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, and uremia; he was in extreme pain and taking morphine and opium, both common over-the-counter drugs at the time. London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House. London's funeral took place on the 26th of November 1916, attended only by close friends, relatives, and workers of the property. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and buried next to some pioneer children, under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House. After Charmian's death in 1955, she was also cremated and then buried with her husband in the same spot that her husband chose. The grave is marked by a mossy boulder. The buildings and property were later preserved as Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, California. Because he was using morphine, many older sources describe London's death as a suicide, and some still do. This conjecture appears to be a rumor, or speculation based on incidents in his fiction writings. His death certificate gives the cause as uremia, following acute renal colic. The biographer Clarice Stasz writes that following London's death, for a number of reasons, a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide. Recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature. Most biographers, including Russ Kingman, now agree he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose. London's fiction features several suicides. In his autobiographical memoir John Barleycorn, he claims, as a youth, to have drunkenly stumbled overboard into the San Francisco Bay, some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me. He said he drifted and nearly succeeded in drowning before sobering up and being rescued by fishermen. In the dénouement of The Little Lady of the Big House, the heroine, confronted by the pain of a mortal gunshot wound, undergoes a physician-assisted suicide by morphine. Also, in Martin Eden, the principal protagonist, who shares certain characteristics with London, drowns himself.