ARDENT HEART

In 1900, London was married, not to Mabel Applegarth, for she did not dare leave her family, but to his friend, Bess Maddern. The newlyweds were happy. Soon the young, developing writer became father to a daughter named Joan. Gradually, the author acquired fame, and prosperity came to his family. But, ever restless, Jack did not stop there. In the fall of 1902, he was scheduled to go as a correspondent to Africa, where the Boer War was taking place, but before he departed, the fighting had already stopped. This news reached him in London. With his interest as a socialist writer, he disguised himself and settled for a few weeks in the East End London slums, so he could study the life of common people.

Using the material collected there and the work of some sociologists, he composed People of the Abyss, in which he described, without embellishment, horrible scenes of poverty, decay and disintegration of British society. Such a truthful and angry book could have been written only by a writer who was close to and loved people, who himself had gone through humiliation and suffering. After his return to the United States, London began working on the novel The Sea-Wolf as well some stories and political articles. A short time thereafter, he sailed away as a newspaper correspondent to the theater of political actions in Asia, the Russian-Japanese War. He left almost three weeks prior to the now infamous, treacherous attack of a Japanese squadron on Port Arthur. At the end of January 1904, he landed with other reporters at Yokohama. From there, he went to Korea where, as was then predicted, major events would be taking place. The trip to Korea took incredible efforts on London's part. It was difficult to get permission to board and to then find a place on a steamer. Japanese officials abruptly confiscated the ship on which London was to sail. He tried to get a ticket on another one, but it was confiscated as well. Finally, London managed to get aboard a fishing boat. At the end of February, with temperatures at zero degrees Celsius, this son of sunny California crossed the stormy Japanese Sea and reached the shore of Korea. From there, he had to sail the sea around the Korean peninsula in order to go from Fusan to Chemulpo. American reporter R. Dunn, who met him in Korea, wrote with admiration: "I want to say that Jack London is one of the grittiest men that it has been my good fortune to meet. He is just as heroic as any of the characters in his novels. He is a man that will stay with you through thick and thin. He doesn't know the meaning of fear, and is willing to risk his life in the performance of his duty. . . . When London arrived in Chemulpo I did not recognize him. He was a physical wreck. His ears were frozen; his fingers were frozen; his feet were frozen. He said that he didn't mind his condition so long as he got to the front. He said his physical collapse counted for nothing. He had been sent to the front to do newspaper work, and he wanted to do it."

Finally, London and Dunn managed to reach Sunan, the northern part of Korea. However, their journey ended there. They were held under arrest for four days, and then returned to Seoul. Showing persistence and risking his life by trying to get to the battlefront of an emerging conflict, Jack London did not realize one important detail. On the night when he sailed his boat into the stormy Yellow Sea, along the rocky Korean shore heading north, a Japanese squadron on the other side of the sea had been slipping in to Port Arthur to carry out a fatal attack on a stationed Russian fleet and victoriously hastened the start of military action. That was why a number of passenger and other ships had been confiscated and harsh restrictions were enforced for foreign newspaper correspondents. One of London's letters from Korea is marked: "On board Junk off Korean Coast, February 9, 1904." It was exactly February 9, 1904, when the Japanese fleet attacked Port Arthur. Because of all the difficulties encountered on the road, London was the last one to reach Seoul, but he managed to be the first one to get to Manchuria. On the 12th of March, he proudly wrote that he pushed further into northern Korea than anyone else, and that he was only 40 miles away from the front line. Two days later, London moved to Ping-yang, on the orders of the Japanese command. "The Japanese do not let us see the war at all," he reported bitterly. Jack London did not receive any letters from home and was not sure whether his correspondence was reaching home. He was not allowed to go more than a mile away from the place designated for his night's lodging. The obstacles created by the Japanese became impossible to bear. Jack asked his newspaper editor to either move him to the Russian side of the fighting or to let him come back because he did not think it was of great benefit for him to stay. The Japanese authorities treated the stubborn reporter with obvious unkindness. London soon was forced to return to the United States.

When he was sailing back from Yokohama his friends also journalists, were still waiting for permission to make the trip to the front. The obstacles and limitations that London encountered could not escape his reports. Japanese censorship demanded that the writer show restraint in expressing sympathies to the Russians yet be careful of criticizing the Japanese Army. Actually, they wanted him to compliment it. Regardless of their wishes, in his correspondence we find both sympathy with Russians and condemnation of Japanese treachery. In the valuation that London gave to the Japanese Army we read caution and anxiety. He warned about the danger that the militaristic machine of Japan presented. Perhaps it was precisely for his sharp eye and boldness of judgment that the socialist writer Jack London had been "dispatched" from the front: from Manchuria, Korea, and Japan.

In his reports, London told about the first clash of the Cossacks with the Japanese forces. He noted the courage of Russian soldiers, who were able to fight to the last cartridge, but were forced to fall back under the pressure of the significantly superior forces of the enemy. London showed the mistakes of Russian officers, who either laid out their camp and weapons in open, vulnerable positions or were bested by a rather primitive trick of the Japanese command. From London's reports, we learned how hostile the attitude of the Korean people was toward Japanese occupation — and not only to the Japanese, but also toward those Europeans and Americans who came with them.

At home, Jack already had two daughters, but his family life was not going well. Bess, though a wonderful mother, had failed to become Jack's closest friend. She could not be the companion who was able to share his interest for literature, who would understand his constant searching as well as the impulses of his rebellious spirit. He left Bess. He escaped to the Valley of the Moon more and more often, getting away from the city to the small village of Glen Ellen. Here, he created many of his works. He developed a lifelong love for the splendid land, still untouched by civilization. After his second marriage in 1905 to Charmian Kittredge, London bought a ranch nearby, which became his permanent home. However, he was not comfortable staying in one place for very long.

Oftentimes, he and Charmian left the ranch. They went on a trip around the world on his yacht, the Snark. Another time, they went boating along the river and the bay on the small vessel, the Roamer, and to the neighboring states on a four-horse wagon trip. They also sailed on the ship Dirigo around South America and took a vacation in Hawaii. Just as in his childhood, Jack always felt a force that moved him to see and to learn more, to experience everything himself. The same force drove him to become a successful boxer and diver; to design a yacht all by himself and later on to operate it, sailing in the Pacific Ocean half way around the world, without a real crew, just with his wife and a handful of helpers. "The thing I like most of all," he wrote in The Cruise of the Snark explaining why he wanted to undertake the risk of traveling around the world, "is personal achievement — not achievement for the world's applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the old 'I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!' But personal achievement, with me, must be concrete. I'd rather win a water-fight in the swimming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out from under me, than write the great American novel." He continued: "The more difficult the feat, the greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and with a backward half-revolution of the body, enters the water head first. Once he left the springboard his environment became immediately savage, and savage the penalty it would have exacted had he failed and struck the water flat. Of course, the man did not have to run the risk of the penalty. He could have remained on the bank in a sweet and placid environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he was not made that way. In that swift mid-air moment, he lived as he could never have lived on the bank. As for myself, I'd rather be that man than the fellows who sat on the bank and watched him. That is why I am building the Snark."

It seems appropriate to mention here his school story, "One More Unfortunate." A troubling fear of "not accomplishing oneself" stimulated the creative power of the writer. Even after serious failures, this thought pushed him to search for new ways of self-assertion, to which he devoted his whole life. In April of 1907, an Oakland newspaper, Socialist Voice, sent friendly parting words on London's departure. "Good bye, Jack! Good-bye! Snark, with the fluttering red flag, raised its anchor on the 23 of April, and Jack London and his wife are already in the open sea. Theodore Roosevelt would be glad to find out that there is one less 'undesirable citizen' in the country."

Not long before that, then President Theodore Roosevelt had referred to Bill Haywood and Charles Moyer as "undesirable citizens." These leaders of the workers' movement had been illegally arrested and thrown into prison for their active organizing work. A number of prominent public officials and writers had spoken in defense of Haywood and Moyer. On his arrival in America, Maxim Gorky had sent them a telegram with greetings, for which he had been subjected to an angry defamation from the Americans. In the defense of the prisoners, London had written an enraged article "Something Rotten in Idaho." Actually, he himself was an "undesirable citizen" of the United States Government.

The Snark cut the waves of the Pacific Ocean, Honolulu, Marquesas Islands, Pago-Pago, the Fiji Islands, and New Hebrides. On the deck, a man of athletic build was writing his novels and stories, bent over a pile of paper. The sea breeze played with his hair, caressed his cheeks, his neck, and whipped under his shirt. Sometimes, he raised his eyes and looked into the endless space with an absent gaze. The expression of his face changed: at times, it was strict and tense; at times tender and bright. What was he writing about?

A clumsy sailor awkwardly took his hat off when entering the living room of a mansion. He was shy; he did not know how to conduct himself. He was a simple, uneducated guy, but he was incredibly sensitive to the beauty of the landscape portrayed in the painting on the living room wall; he was sensitive to the music of the poems by an unknown author, whose book he held in his hands. In this house, a young sailor met a girl of unbelievable beauty, blonde, gentle smart. A strange, pressing feeling embraced him. He fell in love with this unearthly creature. However, he was not her equal. The sailor firmly decided to get an education, become a writer, achieve success, and then marry his beloved. London devoted his novel Martin Eden to this sailor while on the deck of his yacht.

When the wind grew stronger and furiously slammed the sails and splashed salty drops on the Snark's deck, London stepped down into the cabin where he continued to write. He remembered his youth, his love for Mabel and that time when, starving, he had been persistently working on stories, poems, and plays to break through into the realm of published literature. Numerous facts from his own life were recreated through Martin Eden, who, like London himself, became a writer. Like London, Martin Eden also experienced disappointment from those he loved. He too would tire and reach a crisis in life. Though Martin Eden died, having alienated himself from the world of common humanity, London managed to find strength to overcome the crisis he experienced in 1904-1905. The thing that saved him at that time was, according to his own revelation, the conviction that there is nothing in life more important than love of service to the common deed, service to your own people.

During storms, when giant waves rose above the masts, Jack London himself stood at the helm — proud, fascinated by his victory over wild nature. When it was calm, he fished, caught sea turtles, dolphins, sharks, seagulls, and, of course, spent a great amount of time reading, enjoying Ibsen's plays and Maupassant's novels, appreciating the wit of Bernard Shaw and the inexhaustible imagination of H. G. Wells. He walked out on the deck to determine the location of the ship and to check its course. Each day he learned new things about ship-managing. And each day, he spent hours writing.

London was touched by the hospitality of the natives he met on the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Upon leaving the islands, the Snark was nearly sinking under the weight of gifts from the natives. From the Polynesian island Bora Bora, the ship left with garlands of flowers. Native women were greeting everyone with kisses. The ship was abundantly filled with fruits, vegetables, fish and birds. Even a little piglet was presented to the travelers. It was impossible to reject those gifts: it would have offended the hospitable hosts. Thus, right after the Snark departed from shore, the light breeze began to roll pineapples, coconuts, pomegranates, and lemons along the deck. There was no place to adequately store all of the food. At the strong tilt of the ship, most of the bananas, chickens, and nuts fell overboard. It would have been impossible for the crew to eat all of the food in a month's time.

Naturally, while on the Marquesas Islands, Jack could not resist searching for the Typee Valley, about which he had read in one of the books of Herman Melville. He saw ruins where the native villages once stood. In the place where stone buildings had existed just a half-century ago, only a couple of wretched cabins remained. Many of the natives who had populated those islands had been exterminated. Many more had died out, unable to bear the "gifts" of civilization (diseases) to which they were exposed by European colonizers. With bitterness, London wrote that all former "strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures afflicted by leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the population at two thousand not taking into consideration the small adjoining valley of Ho-o-umi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful garden spot where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to be found in the world. Not alone were the Typeans physically magnificent; they were pure. Their air did not contain the bacilli and germs and microbes of disease that fill our own air. And when the white men imported in their ships these various microorganisms of disease, the Typeans crumpled up and went down before them."

The Snark anchored in the Port of Apia, the main city of the West Samoan Islands. Riding the chestnut horses, which were given by a local reporter, Jack and Charmian traveled round the entire city and its surroundings. They saw coconut plantations, cocoa and rubber trees, and even took a swim in a small lake formed by the damming of a mountain spring. The culmination of the trip was their visit to the house and the grave of the unforgettable author of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson. The house, where the best of sea stories were created, belonged to the German governor, and was not open for any visitors, not even famous ones. Jack and Charmian decided to visit the burial place of the author.

The grave was located on the top of a mountain, several miles away from the house. It was difficult to climb the slope through the forest thicket. Charmian wondered how it had been possible to get Stevenson's body up this high mountain, covered with trees. Jack told her the story of how the writer's last will to be buried on that mountaintop was executed. He told her how several hundred natives had been working all night to cut a trail through the forest and prepare the place for the burial. Then, in the morning, the leaders of the tribes lifted the coffin up on their shoulders and, in the company of thousands of Stevenson's admirers, solemnly brought it there.

On May 9, 1908, silently holding hands, Jack and Charmian stood at the place of Stevenson's last retreat, reading the inscription on the gravestone. Tears clouded their eyes. Finally, Jack said: "I would not have gone out of my way to see anybody's grave. But this one is yours, Tusitala." On May 13th, Charmian made a note in her diary: "Last night, Jack delivered a lecture, 'Revolution' at Central Hotel; it provoked a discussion that lasted till midnight. And today, at the table, guests have been discussing socialism and bombarded Jack with questions." Jack lectured more than once on this trip about socialism and engaged in debates, defending its inevitability.

Passing the Savoi Island, the crew of the Snark witnessed one of the most feared events of nature — the eruption of a volcano. Flames were shooting into the night sky. It seemed as if the entire island was on fire; dark red lava crawled down into the ocean, which was boiling, raising puffs of steam. Surging angrily, the sea was giving up its position for the new formation of land. The current carried the yacht toward the island. Who knows what would have been the fate of the Snark's passengers if the yacht had not been equipped with a motor or if it had failed. Jack gave out a command to start the engine and to bring the yacht closer. The air became hot, filled with steam and smoke. They were under double danger: the danger from the cliffs and the danger of igniting the gasoline they had onboard. Finally, they retreated to a safe distance.

Suddenly, a lightning storm appeared, bringing heavy rain with it. The lightning angrily struck the ocean, making the scene even more dramatic. No one slept on the yacht that night. Charmian experienced several awful minutes. In the dim reflection of lightning, through the curtain of rain, it was still possible to distinguish deserted and destroyed villages flooded with lava. With the sunrise, the view of the black coast opened up to the sea travelers. The greenery disappeared; the trees were nowhere to be seen. Everything was covered with lava. The water around the yacht was colored in ominous yellow and green.

In the New Hebrides, some bird, evidently exhausted, fell on the deck. Charmian picked it up in her hands. "Lookie, lookie, what I've got!" she shouted to Jack, who stood at the wheel. The little bird was incredibly beautiful, with multicolored feathers. The poor thing was so tired that it even did not try to escape. Everyone was fascinated by it. "If it's a land-bird you are, to the land you go," said Jack and, changing the course, turned the boat to the barely visible island of Mallicollo. Once they had reached the shore, they released the accidental passenger. Encouraged by joyful shouts, it disappeared behind the coconut trees.

The Snark returned to its course. Impressed by the humane deed of the captain, Martin Johnson, then cook onboard the Snark, later described this event in Through the South Seas with Jack London. "I have little doubt that this is the only time a captain ever went twenty miles out of his way when his fuel was low. . . ." In the mornings, London wrote. After Martin Eden, he began taking time for writing notes about the trip, with Charmian typing them up. As the Snark sailed on, Jack sent chapter after chapter of his writings to different journals. Later, these writings were compiled into a fascinating book, The Cruise of the Snark.

During two years of sailing, Jack London wrote a novel, Adventure, a collection of stories under the title The House of Pride, and a number of marvelous stories that were included in a series of different collections: "Mauki," "A Piece of Steak," and "The House of Mapuhi." While traveling, London had the opportunity to study the lifestyle and customs of the island people. This helped him to better understand the motives for their hatred of invaders. In order to protect their land and their freedom, the natives fought, mostly at a disadvantage, with white settlers. One of these battling episodes London described in his powerful story, "Koolau the Leper": one of the native leaders, Koolau, struggled at the head of his tribe. He fought and died, undefeated, holding a gun in his arms. As soon as they reached a port, London devoured all of the magazines, newspapers, letters that were sent to him from the Valley of the Moon. This was how he learned of another economic crisis in the United States. He also read about an American military naval squadron that left on a trip around the world on December 16, 1907, several months after London's departure.

With their ominous sheen of heavy cannons, battleships were leaving for Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and other ports and world capitals. Like London's Snark, they were to visit Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Hawaii, and several other islands in the Pacific Ocean. However, these ships had quite a different goal. They were to "help" the natives of those islands appreciate the advantages of American civilization. The squadron was sent by the American government to demonstrate the power of a superior state, assuming a special role in the world.