By Amanda Larsh
CONTRIBUTOR
Historians find inspiration and joy in facets of life that others may not, and often wind up devoting large portions of their lives to studying what they love. There is no shortage of infatuated historians and curators at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, Botanical Gardens, as they dedicate their time to filling their minds with every tidbit of information available.
Sue Hodson, curator of Literary Manuscripts, is one of those dedicated individuals. Originally reading Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” in junior high school, it wasn’t until she came to The Huntington in 1990 to curate the British and American literary manuscripts, containing papers from the Renaissance to the present, that she became enamored with Jack London’s life and books. The Huntington is home to the largest Jack London collection—featuring some 60,000 items such as journals, photographs, and books from his personal library and manuscripts. Included is the original version of “The Sea Wolf,” which London infamously later changed to have a happier ending in order to make more money.
In an office decorated with blown-up photos of London leftover from earlier exhibits, toy wolves, early editions of his books and awards for her studies of London, Hodson has truly earned her title of Jack London expert.
“I have all these wolves that people have given to me, because I’m known as the Jack London person here,” Hodson said laughingly as she motions to her collection of toy wolves scattered throughout her office.
Known best for “White Fang” and “The Call of the Wild,” the American was one of the most famous writers of the early 20th century. London was born January 12, 1876 in San Francisco. Biographers believe London’s father was astrologer William Henry Chaney, but it is unknown if Chaney and London’s mother Flora Wellman were legally married, as most of San Francisco’s civil records were destroyed by the fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, including London’s birth certificate.
According to Wellman’s accounts published in local newspapers, Chaney demanded she have an abortion – to which she refused. Hodson claims that Wellman actually did have several abortions, none of which were successful. After London was born, Wellman later married the disabled Civil War veteran John London in 1876 and the new family, including Jack, moved to Oakland. Jack eventually took London’s surname and until he was 18 was unaware that John London was not his biological father, according to Hodson.
Because of John London’s inability to work and his mother’s small income as an astrologer, London was forced to drop out of school at the age of 9 or 10 and work odd jobs around town to help support the family.
“These jobs cemented in him a desire not to spend his life doing this,” said Hodson.
“He had what was called gumption, a lot of stick-to-it-ness and drive and ambition, and he knew he wanted to be something more than what he called a ‘work beast.’”
That yearning to rise above poverty fueled his desire to become a successful writer, but he never forgot where he came from.
“From all of his experiences in his younger life he had a lot of sympathy for the poor and it lead him to be a socialist. But he really wanted to understand what it was like to live among the poor, and that’s what he did for seven weeks for ‘The People of the Abyss,’” said Hodson.
“The People of the Abyss,” Hodson’s favorite non-fiction book by London, was published in 1903. A she pulled out her first edition copy, Hodson explained London was originally hired by a newspaper to cover the end of the Boer War in South Africa. But as London was about to board the ship, he received a telegram saying the paper had canceled the assignment. London got on anyway and set sail for England to fulfill his longtime desire to write a book about poverty in one of the world’s largest cities. He spent time in the East End, one of the poorest sections of the city, and blended in with the people by purchasing a used sailor’s outfit, sleeping on the streets and in parks, and waiting in bread lines. In addition, he photographed the lives of those he befriended and slept among them in order to show the world how they lived for his articles, which became “The People of the Abyss.”
“It’s an amazing book full of his youthful passion and indignation for the plight of the poor, that they scrabble and try to make a living but they can’t, and they never will be able to do any better.”
The complete handwritten manuscript of “The People of the Abyss” was lost, but The Huntington is home to the surviving notebooks London used to jot down his ideas while writing the book. He gathered numerous statistics and notes from other readings into these notebooks as well, because he always felt the need to do extensive research about whatever he was planning to write about, Hodson said.
After London met his second wife in 1904, she became responsible for keeping his manuscripts and papers out of the trashcan because she knew one day he would have an amazing legacy.
“He also prided himself on not going back and rewriting his drafts into something more polished, and frankly there are times where he should have. But not with ‘The Call of the Wild,’ which was also published in 1903. We have most of the manuscripts for his books, except for ‘The Call of the Wild,’ and the theory is that he threw it away because he didn’t need it anymore!”
The Huntington’s staggering collection of photographs taken by London led Hodson to collaborate with fellow London historians Jeanne Campbell Reesman and Philip Adam to create the 2010 coffee table book “Jack London, Photographer.” Containing over 200 of London’s personal photographs taken from the original negatives from the California State Parks collection as well as The Huntington’s collection of nearly 10,000 photos, it took the team five years to put the book together.
London’s captivating stories put him on the map early in his writing career: a career that lasted right up to his death in 1916 at the age of 40. He was a bona fide celebrity in an era before celebrities, with just about everything he did or was rumored to have done making it into newspapers around the country. In addition to writing, he owned a 1,400-acre ranch in the Sonoma Valley in California – but he made sure to stick to his regiment of writing 1,000 words a day as well as reading several books at a time.
“For too long he was viewed as two things: the writer of dog stories for kids and a popular writer. Those two things are the kiss of death, but within the last 20 years he has made his entrance into academic studies, and it’s time. He really is worth studying.”
London’s recently rediscovered popularity as a figure worthy of historical and literary study should soon lead to an array of new studies and literature about the man and his amazing accomplishments. Among these publications, make sure to look for Sue Hodson’s upcoming essay on “The People of the Abyss,” which is slated to be published in the Oxford Journal.
