The Mentor: Makers of American Fiction 3
Jack London_
FOUR
Jack London’s stories were written largely out of his own life. If they
were not actual experiences cast in fiction form, they were narratives
spun out of the fiber of his own experiences. Life was never certain
for London. He was always on the go, and his life was an ever vigorous,
vital _present_, with the future undetermined and unguessed. He was
born in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. When he was eleven years
old he left his ranch in the Livermore Valley and set out to satisfy
his longing for a knowledge of the world and an __EXPRESSION__ of himself.
He first went to Oakland, where, in the public library, he came under
the romantic influence of such fiction writers as Washington Irving,
Ouida and others. Out of Irving’s “Alhambra” he built castles in
the air for himself, and launched upon a great literary career with
a strong under-current of romance and an irresistible longing for
adventure. He left home and joined the oyster pirates in San Francisco
Bay. Then, tiring of the excitement of piracy, he turned with equal
enthusiasm to the prosecution of it by joining the Fish Patrol, and
was entrusted with the arrest of some who were his former comrades.
Thrilling accounts of this life appeared under the title of “Tales
of a Fish Patrol.” In them is a wild buccaneer spirit, and the savor
of the sea. Those of us that read the “Sea Wolf” can find there a
passionate __EXPRESSION__ of the author’s own experiences before the mast
while seal hunting in Behring Sea or along the coast of Japan. It is
full of strong appealing character and strange sea lore. The same wild
breath of adventure is to be found in “The Mutiny of the Elsinore,” in
which London describes thrilling experiences in a trip around the Horn.
London was a worker, and labored hard among the rougher elements of
life--with longshoremen and shovellers in San Francisco; in factories
and on the decks of coastwise vessels. He was as good a tramp, too,
as he was a laboring man. He walked the Continent over from ocean to
ocean, gathering the materials for a “vast understanding of the common
man.” Out of these experiences came “The Road,” which is an appealing
record of sympathy with the vagrant poor, and an absorbing narrative of
adventurous journeying.
London tried schooling at different times in his early life, working
between hours to pay for his education. After several months of stern,
hard application, in which he covered about three years’ preparatory
work, he entered the University of California. The strain, however, of
work and study combined was too much for him, and after three months
he had to give up. Turning to things quite different, and with a
desperate hope that he might find fresh inspiration in a new kind of
life, he set off for the widely advertised Klondike to seek for gold.
In the Klondike “nobody talks; everybody thinks; you get your true
perspective; I got mine,” he says. After a year of hard toil in the
north, London returned home and assumed the burden of supporting his
family, his father having died while he was away. He wrote story upon
story, and finally gained acceptance and success. As book after book
came out, the public grew to know and recognize Jack London as one of
the strongest figures in American fiction.
He passed away on November 22, 1916, in the full swing of his
intellectual vigor, and it will be long before his splendid achievement
is forgotten, or the last of his books is consigned to the high shelves
that spell oblivion. No matter how sparing one may be in the use of
the word genius, for him it could be claimed. His name is one of the
few among those of the writing men of our time with which the magic
word is, without hesitation, to be linked. There was genius in his
invention, in his imagery, in his nervous style. To him was given to
know the moods of Arctic wastes and California valleys. The struggles
of his own soul and mind and body he dissected and portrayed in
“Martin Eden” (1909) and “John Barleycorn” (1913). He was practically
the only American writer to invade magnificently the prize-ring as a
field for romantic narrative. Its seamy side, its sordid corruption,
its driftage, as well as its brutal heroism, are reflected in such
tales as “The Game,” “The Abysmal Brute,” “The Shadow and the Flash,”
and “The Mexican.” “The Call of the Wild” (1903) challenges the very
best dog-stories of all time. “The Sea Wolf” (1904) is an epic of salt
brine, and creaking rigging, and man’s inhumanity to man, and the
“blond masters of the world.” There followed “Burning Daylight” (1910),
and “The Valley of the Moon” (1913), and “The Mutiny of the Elsinore”
(1914), which is “The Sea Wolf” “in a lower key,” and “The Strength of
the Strong” (1914), and a dozen more. Whatever the field, there was a
sureness of touch, and a power of graphic description that made the man
always a figure and a force.
[Illustration: REX BEACH]
_Rex Beach_
FIVE
It was in Alaska--the field of “The Forerunner,” the Kipling poem that
was for so many years lost and entirely forgotten by its author, the
field of Robert W. Service’s “Songs of a Sourdough,” the field of so
many of the tales of Jack London and Stewart Edward White, that Rex
Beach first found literary __EXPRESSION__. He did not set out in life to be
a literary man. He was a husky youth, full of vitality and, even in his
teens, a giant in strength. He was born in Atwood, Michigan, September
1, 1877, and he left his native place for the city of Chicago when he
was eighteen years of age. He meant to study law, but, as he said, he
“had no money--therefore had to find a place to eat.” In those days
the athletic associations of several of the large cities maintained
football teams of giant gladiators to entertain the multitude. Young
Beach had seen just one game of football, but when he presented
himself, his physical architecture was so imposing that he was engaged
without hesitation, as tackle, by the athletic association football
manager. The college teams used to play an annual series with these
huge professionals. Later they gave it up, because the “truck-horse
professionals” hired by the athletic associations could not be hurt
by anything short of an ax, while the college players, as Beach said,
were apt to “tear under the wing.” Beach played through the season,
taking part in the games by which his team won the championship of
America. Then, being desirous of eating regularly, he attached himself
to the athletic association’s swimming team and broke an indoor record
at water polo. That was in 1897, when the Klondike excitement broke
out. He stampeded with the rest. It was the spirit of adventure and no
thought of finding material for fiction that took him to the Yukon.
With two partners from Chicago, Beach was dumped off the boat at
Rampart, on the Yukon, one rainy night. The three hadn’t a dollar
amongst them, but they had plenty of goods. Then things began to
happen. “We prepared to become exorbitantly rich,” in the words of
Beach, “but it was a bad winter. There were fifteen hundred rough-necks
in town, very little food and plenty of scurvy. I soon found that my
strength was my legs. I could stampede with anybody. So I stampeded
faithfully whenever I heard of a gold strike, all that winter.” He
became dissatisfied with his two Chicago partners, because they
preferred to sit around the cabin cooking tasty messes to tearing
through blizzards at the tail of a dog team. They wanted to wait for
their million dollars until spring, but Beach wanted his by Christmas
at the latest. And so he set off, and quickly fell under the spell
of the Yukon. The glare of the white Arctic night, the toil of the
long trail, the complicated struggle for existence, the reversion to
primitive passions inevitable in a new civilization in process of
formation, made an imperative call to him, and held him fascinated.
The life about him moved him to write, and before long he was embarked
on a literary career. “Pardners,” his first story, appeared in 1904,
and this was followed by the novel that gave him reputation--“The
Spoilers,” which appeared in 1906. Then came “The Barrier” in 1907,
and “The Silver Horde” in 1909. They are all virile stories of Alaskan
life that have stirred many thousands of readers. Some have gone into
dramatic form, “The Barrier” having attained a new and distinguished
success as a film picture. In “The Ne’er Do Well” and in “The Net”
Beach sought Southern scenes, the former novel having Panama as its
background, and “The Net” New Orleans during the Mafia days. “The
Auction Block,” published in 1914, deals with the favorite activities
of modern Metropolitan life, and the sale of young girls into the
marriage tie.
Mr. Beach was christened “Rex E. Beach,” and he retained the middle
initial for some time, but when correspondents who had read his books
sent letters to him in which they addressed him as “_Rev._ E. Beach,”
he dropped the middle initial. He lives in New York City and has a
summer residence at Landing, Lake Hopatcong, N. J.
[Illustration: STEWART EDWARD WHITE]
_Stewart Edward White_
SIX
Readers often link the name of Jack London and Stewart Edward White.
The men were of the same literary stature, though different from each
other in almost every respect. Both found inspiration in the same
theme--the struggle of man with primeval forces. In their technique
we find the difference. There is a sharp contrast between the fire of
Jack London and the held-in strength of Stewart Edward White. White
was once asked if it was not possible to lay hold of the heart and
imagination of the public through a novel which had no human love
interest in it--whether man matched against nature was not, after all,
the eternal drama. White considered for a moment and then said: “In the
main, that is correct. Only I should say that the one great drama is
that of the individual man’s struggles toward perfect adjustment with
his environment. According as he comes into correspondence and harmony
with his environment, by that much does he succeed. That is what an
environment is for. It may be financial, natural, sexual, political,
and so on. The sex element is important, of course--very important.
But it is not the only element by any means; nor is it necessarily
an element that exercises an _instant_ influence on the great drama.
Anyone who so depicts it is violating the truth. Other elements of the
great drama are as important--self-preservation, for example, is a very
simple and even more important instinct than that of the propagation of
the race. Properly presented, these other elements, being essentially
vital, are of as much interest to the great public as the relation of
the sexes.” These words express clearly the trend of Stewart Edward
White’s work.
From the beginning, Mr. White’s career has been one of prompt
recognition and well-ordered prosperity. He was born at Grand Rapids,
Michigan, on March 12, 1873. He attended no school until he was
sixteen years of age, and yet, far from being behind his schoolmates,
he entered the high school in the junior class with boys of his own
age and graduated at eighteen, president of his class. He excelled in
athletics and held the long distance running record of his school. He
graduated a few years later from the University of Michigan, and then
spent two years in the Columbia Law School, New York
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