JACK LONDON
BY HIMSELF
I was born in San Francisco in 1876. At fifteen I was a man among
men, and if I had a spare nickel I spent it on beer instead of
candy, because I thought it was more manly to buy beer. Now, when
my years are nearly doubled, I am out on a hunt for the boyhood
which I never had, and I am less serious than at any other time of
my life. Guess I'll find that boyhood! Almost the first things I
realized were responsibilities. I have no recollection of being
taught to read or write--I could do both at the age of five--but I
know that my first school was in Alameda before I went out on a
ranch with my folks and as a ranch boy worked hard from my eighth
year.
The second school were I tried to pick up a little learning was an
irregular hit or miss affair at San Mateo. Each class sat in a
separate desk, but there were days when we did not sit at all, for
the master used to get drunk very often, and then one of the elder
boys would thrash him. To even things up, the master would then
thrash the younger lads, so you can think what sort of school it
was. There was no one belonging to me, or associated with me in any
way, who had literary tastes or ideas, the nearest I can make to it
is that my great-grandfather was a circuit writer, a Welshman, known
as "Priest" Jones in the backwoods, where his enthusiasm led him to
scatter the Gospel.
One of my earliest and strongest impressions was of the ignorance of
other people. I had read and absorbed Washington Irving's
"Alhambra" before I was nine, but could never understand how it was
that the other ranchers knew nothing about it. Later I concluded
that this ignorance was peculiar to the country, and felt that those
who lived in cities would not be so dense. One day a man from the
city came to the ranch. He wore shiny shoes and a cloth coat, and I
felt that here was a good chance for me to exchange thoughts with an
enlightened mind. From the bricks of an old fallen chimney I had
built an Alhambra of my own; towers, terraces, and all were
complete, and chalk inscriptions marked the different sections.
Here I led the city man and questioned him about "The Alhambra," but
he was as ignorant as the man on the ranch, and then I consoled
myself with the thought that there were only two clever people in
the world--Washington Irving and myself.
My other reading-matter at that time consisted mainly of dime
novels, borrowed from the hired men, and newspapers in which the
servants gloated over the adventures of poor but virtuous shop-
girls.
Through reading such stuff my mind was necessarily ridiculously
conventional, but being very lonely I read everything that came my
way, and was greatly impressed by Ouida's story "Signa," which I
devoured regularly for a couple of years. I never knew the finish
until I grew up, for the closing chapters were missing from my copy,
so I kept on dreaming with the hero, and, like him, unable to see
Nemesis, at the end. My work on the ranch at one time was to watch
the bees, and as I sat under a tree from sunrise till late in the
afternoon, waiting for the swarming, I had plenty of time to read
and dream. Livermore Valley was very flat, and even the hills
around were then to me devoid of interest, and the only incident to
break in on my visions was when I gave the alarm of swarming, and
the ranch folks rushed out with pots, pans, and buckets of water. I
think the opening line of "Signa" was "It was only a little lad,"
yet he had dreams of becoming a great musician, and having all
Europe at his feet. Well, I was only a little lad, too, but why
could not I become what "Signa" dreamed of being?
Life on a Californian ranch was then to me the dullest possible
existence, and every day I thought of going out beyond the sky-line
to see the world. Even then there were whispers, promptings; my
mind inclined to things beautiful, although my environment was
unbeautiful. The hills and valleys around were eyesores and aching
pits, and I never loved them till I left them.
Before I was eleven I left the ranch and came to Oakland, where I
spent so much of my time in the Free Public Library, eagerly reading
everything that came to hand, that I developed the first stages of
St. Vitus' dance from lack of exercise. Disillusions quickly
followed, as I learned more of the world. At this time I made my
living as a newsboy, selling papers in the streets; and from then on
until I was sixteen I had a thousand and one different occupations--
work and school, school and work--and so it ran.
* * *
Then the adventure-lust was strong within me, and I left home. I
didn't run, I just left--went out in the bay, and joined the oyster
pirates. The days of the oyster pirates are now past, and if I had
got my dues for piracy, I would have been given five hundred years
in prison. Later, I shipped as a sailor on a schooner, and also
took a turn at salmon fishing. Oddly enough, my next occupation was
on a fish-patrol, where I was entrusted with the arrest of any
violators of the fishing laws. Numbers of lawless Chinese, Greeks,
and Italians were at that time engaged in illegal fishing, and many
a patrolman paid his life for his interference. My only weapon on
duty was a steel table-fork, but I felt fearless and a man when I
climbed over the side of a boat to arrest some marauder.
Subsequently I shipped before the mast and sailed for the Japanese
coast on a seal-hunting expedition, later going to Behring Sea.
After sealing for seven months I came back to California and took
odd jobs at coal shovelling and longshoring and also in a jute
factory, where I worked from six in the morning until seven at
night. I had planned to join the same lot for another sealing trip
the following year, but somehow I missed them. They sailed away on
the Mary Thomas, which was lost with all hands.
In my fitful school-days I had written the usual compositions, which
had been praised in the usual way, and while working in the jute
mills I still made an occasional try. The factory occupied thirteen
hours of my day, and being young and husky, I wanted a little time
for myself, so there was little left for composition. The San
Francisco Call offered a prize for a descriptive article. My mother
urged me to try for it, and I did, taking for my subject "Typhoon
off the Coast of Japan." Very tired and sleepy, knowing I had to be
up at half-past five, I began the article at midnight and worked
straight on until I had written two thousand words, the limit of the
article, but with my idea only half worked out. The next night,
under the same conditions, I continued, adding another two thousand
words before I finished, and then the third night I spent in cutting
out the excess, so as to bring the article within the conditions of
the contest. The first prize came to me, and the second and third
went to students of the Stanford and Berkeley Universities.
My success in the San Francisco Call competition seriously turned my
thoughts to writing, but my blood was still too hot for a settled
routine, so I practically deferred literature, beyond writing a
little gush for the Call, which that journal promptly rejected.
I tramped all through the United States, from California to Boston,
and up and down, returning to the Pacific coast by way of Canada,
where I got into jail and served a term for vagrancy, and the whole
tramping experience made me become a Socialist. Previously I had
been impressed by the dignity of labour, and, without having read
Carlyle or Kipling, I had formulated a gospel of work which put
theirs in the shade. Work was everything. It was sanctification
and salvation. The pride I took in a hard day's work well done
would be inconceivable to you. I was as faithful a wage-slave as
ever a capitalist exploited. In short, my joyous individualism was
dominated by the orthodox bourgeois ethics. I had fought my way
from the open west, where men bucked big and the job hunted the man,
to the congested labour centres of the eastern states, where men
were small potatoes and hunted the job for all they were worth, and
I found myself looking upon life from a new and totally different
angle. I saw the workers in the shambles at the bottom of the
Social Pit. I swore I would never again do a hard day's work with
my body except where absolutely compelled to, and I have been busy
ever since running away from hard bodily labour.
In my nineteenth year I returned to Oakland and started at the High
School, which ran the usual school magazine. This publication was a
weekly--no, I guess a monthly--one, and I wrote stories for it, very
little imaginary, just recitals of my sea and tramping experiences.
I remained there a year, doing janitor work as a means of
livelihood, and leaving eventually because the strain was more than
I could bear. At this time my socialistic utterances had attracted
considerable attention, and I was known as the "Boy Socialist," a
distinction that brought about my arrest for street-talking. After
leaving the High School, in three months cramming by myself, I took
the three years' work for that time and entered the University of
California. I hated to give up the hope of a University education
and worked in a laundry and with my pen to help me keep on. This
was the only time I worked because I loved it, but the task was too
much, and when half-way through my Freshman year I had to quit.
I worked away ironing shirts and other things in the laundry, and
wrote in all my spare time. I tried to keep on at both, but often
fell asleep with the pen in my hand. Then I left the laundry and
wrote all the time, and lived and dreamed again. After three
months' trial I gave up writing, having decided that I was a
failure, and left for the Klondike to prospect for gold. At the end
of the year, owing to the outbreak of scurvy, I was compelled to
come out, and on the homeward journey of 1,900 miles in an open boat
made the only notes of the trip. It was in the Klondike I found
myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. You get your true
perspective. I got mine.
While I was in the Klondike my father died, and the burden of the
family fell on my shoulders. Times were bad in California, and I
could get no work. While trying for it I wrote "Down the River,"
which was rejected. During the wait for this rejection I wrote a
twenty-thousand word serial for a news company, which was also
rejected. Pending each rejection I still kept on writing fresh
stuff. I did not know what an editor looked like. I did not know a
soul who had ever published anything. Finally a story was accepted
by a Californian magazine, for which I received five dollars. Soon
afterwards "The Black Cat" offered me forty dollars for a story.
Then things took a turn, and I shall probably not have to shovel
coal for a living for some time to come, although I have done it,
and could do it again.
My first book was published in 1900. I could have made a good deal
at newspaper work; but I had sufficient sense to refuse to be a
slave to that man-killing machine, for such I held a newspaper to be
to a young man in his forming period. Not until I was well on my
feet as a magazine-writer did I do much work for newspapers. I am a
believer in regular work, and never wait for an inspiration.
Temperamentally I am not only careless and irregular, but
melancholy; still I have fought both down. The discipline I had as
a sailor had full effect on me. Perhaps my old sea days are also
responsible for the regularity and limitations of my sleep. Five
and a half hours is the precise average I allow myself, and no
circumstance has yet arisen in my life that could keep me awake when
the time comes to "turn in."
I am very fond of sport, and delight in boxing, fencing, swimming,
riding, yachting, and even kite-flying. Although primarily of the
city, I like to be near it rather than in it. The country, though,
is the best, the only natural life. In my grown-up years the
writers who have influenced me most are Karl Marx in a particular,
and Spencer in a general, way. In the days of my barren boyhood, if
I had had a chance, I would have gone in for music; now, in what are
more genuinely the days of my youth, if I had a million or two I
would devote myself to writing poetry and pamphlets. I think the
best work I have done is in the "League of the Old Men," and parts
of "The Kempton-Wace Letters." Other people don't like the former.
They prefer brighter and more cheerful things. Perhaps I shall feel
like that, too, when the days of my youth are behind me.
Footnotes:
{1} Malahini--new-comer.
