---

Death

Baum

Did you see much of Jack London after he and Charmian got the ranch at the Valley of the Moon?

Martinez

Yes, several times. When he came to see his daughter he always came over to the studio in Piedmont. Then we spent a weekend at the ranch with him three weeks before he died.

As the Socialist Party, winning its battles for labor, deteriorated and had lost the Marxian revolutionary spirit and impetus - to which Jack was wholeheartedly dedicated - he turned to scientific agriculture and animal husbandry. This was a temporary refuge to fill the desperate need he had for action, to project himself into aims and plans for the betterment of humanity through science.

Without the necessary practical background, he started projects that were bound to fail. He put up a beautiful scientific pig pen, a cement silo in the center, out from which radiated the pig pens, each one with its scientific feeder, its automatic water sprinkler, its neat and clean cement area on which his pigs lived. The pigs died mysteriously of cholera despite all his precaution. I remember the creosote mat on which each of us had to rub his feet before entering the farm, which did not protect them.

He sent to England for a $2,000 horse to breed a special stock. It was poisoned. The day after we left, his "Wolf House", on which he had spent so much effort - he'd picked every timber for it - burned down - the day it was finished.

---

Socialists had a hand in it - he was quite sure of that. Anyhow, his heart was somewhat broken that night that the house burned down, his dream shattered. It was really handsome, built along the lines he wanted and he had picked every redwood log put into it.

The Socialists did not approve of this luxury and the critics claimed he sold himself to Hearst to support this ranch. He, himself, told us that it cost him $80,000 a year for its upkeep.

His bull pen was unbelievable! In a circle of redwoods, enclosed by a fence of redwood logs, a thick carpet of redwood needles underfoot, in the center a raised ornamental cement basin from which clear, fresh water dripped, and a log cabin for a shelter, was the home of his handsome prize bull.

He showed us, with great pride, the scientific charts of the stock he was breeding and of his plans for scientific farming.

We had a Hawaiian friend in San Francisco who told us of knowing the beautiful half-Hawaiian lady with whom Jack had fallen desperately in love. This lovely creature was beautiful, sensual and mysterious, and Jack had, on his recent trip to the Islands, asked her to marry him.

It was obvious that Jack was bored with Charmian. He called her childish, he was irritable, and he spoke sharply to her. To me it was upsetting to see the fear in her eyes and her attempts to pass off his cruel remarks gaily. He had loved to hear her play Rachmaninoff's Prelude, her one show piece. That evening she had played only a chord or two when Jack loudly proclaimed he loved only Hawaiian music, and she left the piano.

---

The night he died, Dr. Porter, who was a great friend of Marty's (and his doctor) was there. The Japanese boy, as was his habit to take Jack his medicine, rushed to Charmian babbling that he could not wake the master. Charmian called Dr. Porter, who was spending the weekend with them. They found Jack in a state of coma. On Jack's bed table, he saw a notation of two drugs that put together are deadly. Dr. Porter knew then what had happened. "We've got to keep him alive until we get the antidote," he said. And he called the village pharmacist to get it up there as quickly as possible.

Then began the heartbreaking struggle to bring Jack out of the coma. They pulled him upright, forced coffee down his throat, slapped and rubbed his muscles to keep his circulation going, got him off the bed, and supporting him, tried to make him walk. The pharmacist arrived and Dr. Porter gave him the antidote. Again, they renewed the frantic struggle to keep Jack alive.

Exhausted and hopeless, Dr. Porter was easing him onto the bed when Jack opened his eyes and with the most heartbreaking look Porter had ever seen, he whispered, "You know I have to go, and you can't stop me". He then fell back unconscious and died.

One of the obsessions Jack had, George Sterling told us, was that he was losing his mind like his mother. Sterling used to soothe him by declaring he was merely suffering from exhaustion.

She was one of the most picturesque old girls I have ever known. She was a spiritualist when young and used to hold seances.

---

She was imaginative and a wild enthusiast, too. I loved her. Often I went to see her. The last time was when I was sixteen. She had a wig and in one of the paroxysms of Lady Macbeth, she made a grand gesture, grabbed her wig and flung it across the porch. Without dropping a word or changing a tone, she inserted, "Child, bring me my wig" and upon retrieving it, clapped it on her head, a bit askew, and finished her part.

Jack's father was a popularizer of science when science and religion were at each other's throats. Jack's love of science came from his father, but he inherited his mother's imagination and enthusiasm.

When ill and exhausted and he couldn't work, he tried to pull himself out of his depressions with drink. Carrie told us after Jack was taken to the mortuary, Charmian noticed the burned remains of a letter in his ashtray. She tried to recover a fragment, but each time she touched it, it dissolved into dust, so her curiosity was never satisfied. But the letter had come that day from this beautiful Hawaiian, as I heard from the Hawaiian family; she turned him down.

Then the bitterest of all, which has never been touched on: he was an Anglophile and he thought World War I would bring about the Revolution. To him, war was heroic, the means of destroying all the decay, all the stagnation. And he was pretty conscious of the stagnation of that Victorian period even in his Socialist Party. He spent his time trying to get people to go to war and he couldn't go.

---

All of his friends were going; he knew, because he was a radical, he would be denied a passport and wouldn't be allowed to leave the Valley of the Moon. That was the bitterest of all, and he only mentioned it once while we were there. He said, "I know I can't go, but I persuaded seven men to enter the army".

Then another point: I was in on all the uproar about Joan going up there. Joan was majoring in writing in high school and her father was interested. She wrote the most foolish, silly novel that ever was written and Charmian was malicious enough to get the newspapers to publish it. It was a grave mistake so far as Joan was concerned. It was a silly cloak and dagger thing. This was when she was eighteen that it was published; she was sixteen then. Her mother, Bessie, was just fanatical about that frightful woman - they lived right next to us and I saw her many times - she hated Charmian so. Jack wrote several very fine letters which Bessie had me read; he wanted Joan to come up to visit him on the ranch. The last thing he had left was the father role. He wanted Joan to come up desperately. His letters were appeals. He wrote, "My child, I'll give you every advantage. You want to be a writer and I will do everything I can to develop your talent. Come up to the ranch. I would love to take and develop you."

Well, I was there the day that Bessie won and she showed me, with a fanatical satisfaction, the letter she had Joan write. "I cannot go up to the ranch until that beast of a woman who ruined my mother's life is off it". That's all that was written to Jack London,

---

her father, and then signed Joan.

In Jack London's beautiful study the last night we were there, three weeks before he died, the only photograph on his desk was a photograph of Joan. He picked it up and looked at it and said sadly, "This child has no idea what she has given up." And bitterly excoriating Bessie he finished, "She has ruined this girl's life. I needed her now."

Speaking of pictures, little Bess came to see me, and that poor little dear. I had an early photograph of Jack in his little studio in Oakland. She studied it for a moment, then cried pathetically. She said, "I have practically nothing of my father's". So, I gave her that photograph, the earliest one of him as a writer.

These two girls, both of them, married YMCA secretaries. When Jack wanted to give a man the last insult, he called him a YMCA secretary. Joan married Park Abbott.

Walker

Did you run into any theories when Jack died that he might have been murdered?

Martinez

No, not the slightest. Dr. Porter came to see us the day after he died and told us the whole story exactly as it happened. They had spent exhausting hours keeping him alive, jerking him around, walking, filling him with coffee, giving him antidotes for the poison. Finally he opened his eyes and looked up at Dr. Porter and said, "Bill, you can't do this to me. I've got to go and you know it!" Porter was so shocked and so exhausted that he just let his hand go, and Jack fell back on the bed and was gone.

---

Walker

There were some friends of London's who were very suspicious of Charmian after his death.

Martinez

Oh, she worshipped the ground that man walked on. That would be the last person I'd pick.

Walker

I've never been satisfied with the story of Jack London's death. I corresponded to some extent with the one doctor who testified. My own theory is that he took an overdose of morphine thinking to ease the terrific pain he was in. I'm not convinced he committed suicide.

Martinez

Well, Dr. Porter was there when he died. He rushed in with Charmian and on the desk was a note, a combination of two drugs that mixed together were quite lethal. And he, Charmian and the houseboy spent two hours frantically trying to keep him alive.

Walker

Dr. Porter signed the death certificate saying it was death from natural causes, uremic poisoning I think he called it, to please Charmian.

Martinez

Yes, he did. He told us. They called it uremic poisoning.

Walker

He had renal colic, he'd been in incredible pain, there's no doubt about that.

Martinez

Yes, he was exhausted, and he had this mania that his mother was cracked and a mental case and he feared, since he had mental exhaustion, he might be losing his mind.

We took Pal (Harriet Dean) up there three weeks before he died. He looked so tired, and he said about Charmian, "She is so childish," with the most tired air.

Baum

Did you feel when you saw him then that he was worn out? Did he

---

seem used up?

Martinez

No, he wasn't used up. Rather, individualism was dying, that was all. He told us he'd lost his illusions about socialism. He'd sent in his resignation from the party and they wouldn't accept it, they sent it back. They weren't going to let go of the only figure they had. He was also very bitter about the loss of his "Wolf" house and his stock. And the last great love of his life was ended.

Baum

How did Charmian take his death?

Martinez

Well, this is another story about Charmian. Now she's dead and I can tell it. Carrie Sterling went up to stay with Charmian because she felt it was such a horrible tragedy when Jack died and we all expected Charmian to try, at least, to join him. Carrie told us Charmian slept like a log, which shocked her. She had always been the "Lady in the Big House" who couldn't sleep a night for fear of losing him and called them her "White Nights". Carrie asked, "Charmian, how can you sleep after Jack is gone?" Charmian replied, "My dear girl, I want you to understand, this is the first time I've had any sleep in my entire life married to London" and triumphantly added, "because now I can't lose him". So she went right on to live as a kind of shadow of Jack, always trying to furbish up her role as his mate.

Baum

Had Carrie come to like her? Is that why she went up?

Martinez

Oh, Carrie, who loved Jack, was so shocked after that incident that she was through with her. But I thought that was typical of Charmian. She wanted fame, position, and she would do anything to get it. Jack was the center of her universe because he gave her

---

that, but when he died she lived on as his shadow and had an important position that way.

She was quite homely, but vital and gay. None of Jack's friends could see why Jack had fallen in love with Charmian. She was vain and clever and she had studied him and found just what he wanted in a wife - a good typist, a good sport, a fine horsewoman, and a vital and gay companion. Besides, she adored him. His word was law and she lived accordingly, so she was no problem.

Now, he was completely bored and sick of her. He was ruthless, too. We were really uncomfortable at the cruel things he would say to her and she took them, I'll have to say, gallantly, often with clever twists of his meaning. We were conscious all the time that there was something wrong there.