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"My love for Jack is a sort of worship. Not a fetish sort of thing. It is a grand emotion—a high passion. I seem to love, as always, as in a beaming light of him. Whom better could one worship? I say it to a friend of his. He was so grand. His light is immortal to me—even if he is not. I think you recognize the feeling. It preludes despair or true loneliness. It has been and the after-glow is, and shall be forever. I know he would weep should I miss one thrill of living. Rather, would he rejoice in that he better fitted me for life and living. Cheerful, I rise from my bed. I possess worthwhileness, whether worthwhileness really be or not. I will to create worthwhileness for myself, while I may last in the flesh. I will not die while I am still living. I will not to die by moments, by inches. I will to die all at once, and completely. Is that a worn and tattered creed? I think not."
- Charmian Kittredge London

Charmian Kittredge London

Charmian Kittredge London
Charmian Kittredge London

Charmian Kittredge London (November 27, 1871 – January 14, 1955)

 While traveling in the South Seas in 1908 Charmian Kittredge London wrote, “to put pen on paper what I behold is like painting a picture….there is fascination  in trying to share with the many what, so few can see.” (Log of the Snark, 278-79). Indeed, throughout her life, Charmian, who is best known for being the second wife of American author Jack London, sought adventure and loved to write about it.  She authored four books, many essays and edited and ghost wrote many of Jack London’s works.

“Clara” Charmian Kittredge was born in Wilmington, CA to the poet and writer Dayelle “Daisy” Wiley and the Union Soldier and entrepreneur Willard “Kitt” Kittredge. Her mother’s family traveled via wagon train from Wisconsin to Utah on the Overland Trail.  Her father, whose family had been in the shipping industry in Mount Desert Island since the 1700s, came west during the Gold Rush after which he joined the Union Army.  Her parents married in Utah, then relocated to Wilmington, CA where Charmian was born.  Charmian spent her early years living in her father’s hotels.  After the American Hotel in Petaluma, CA burned down, her mother became sick.  Unfortunately, it was a sickness from which she would not recover.  Her mother died in 1877 when Charmian was six years old. Kitt tried to raise Charmian on his own, but her aunts insisted that she couldn’t live in the boarding houses Kitt was running.  So, she was sent to Oakland, CA to live with her aunt, the author, Ninetta “Netta” Wiley Eames and husband Roscoe L. Eames.

Life in the Eames household was regimented and difficult.  In response Charmian developed a secret life that focused on art and her imagination.  Her father, with whom she remained close, died when she was fourteen years old.  Orphaned, Charmian was determined to become independent.  She convinced her Uncle Roscoe who wrote The Manual of Light Line Shorthand (1880), to teach her shorthand and in return she helped him teach private lessons.  At sixteen, Charmian acquired a job working for Susan Mills at the first college west of the Rockies to open its doors to women, Mills Seminary and College in Oakland, CA.  She graduated in June 1888 and began working as a stenographer for the Harding and Forbes shipping firm in San Francisco at a time when few women worked in this field.

Charmian refused to adhere to the gender norms of her day.  She was an avid horseback rider who refused to ride side-saddle.  Instead, she created a split skirt to ride astride. She refused to marry knowing that if she did so she would lose her job (married women were not permitted to keep their jobs in the 1890s).  Instead, she dated men and enjoyed a full social life that included the intellectual circle that surrounded the Overland Monthly, San Francisco’s famed literary journal.  In 1900, her aunt Netta invited her to lunch with an up-and-coming writer who was publishing his short stories in the Overland named Jack London.  Netta was writing an article about the star.  Charmian met them for lunch at Young’s restaurant.  By this time, Charmian was now working for E. Mickle and Company, one of the largest shipping firms in San Francisco and had an assistant who reported to her.  Five years younger than Charmian, London found her literary knowledge impressive and they both hit it off. They met on several occasions at Charmian’s home in Berkeley to discuss literature including the works Tess of the d’UrbervillesThe Forest Lovers, and Flood-Tide. Then, suddenly, a month later London married Elizabeth “Bess” Maddern, with whom he had two children, Joan, and Becky.

During this time Charmian traveled to Utah and Mount Desert Island to visit the city where her parents met and to meet the Kittredge side of her family.  From Maine she traveled to  Europe and when returning from Maine to the Bay Area she visited the Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo New York where she saw an exhibit about Joshua Slocum’s feat of sailing solo around the world.

Charmian began her own writing career in the 1890s publishing non-fiction essays, including a plea for women to quit riding sidesaddle. When she returned to the Bay Area, she quickly became part of Jack’s social circle of Bohemian artists and writers known as The Crowd and started attending their weekly gatherings at the London’s home. According to Joseph Noel, it was at one of these gatherings in 1902 when Jack first kissed Charmian. During this time Jack also became enamored of Anna Strunsky, a Socialist who co-authored his epistolary novel The Kempton-Wace Letters.

Over the next few years, Jack and Charmian began to meet secretly and fall in love. They shared a love of sailing and often met on San Francisco Bay. Upon Jack’s return from covering the  Russo-Japanese War in early 1904, Bessie filed for divorce.  A year after the divorce was finalized, Jack and Charmian were married in Chicago on November 19, 1905.  They spent most of their honeymoon on Jack’s socialism themed lecture tour before traveling to Mount Desert Island (to meet Charmian’s family), Jamaica, and Cuba.  While abroad, Charmian photographed all she saw and wrote about it in her journals.

The London’s settled in Glen Ellen at Wake Robin Lodge and began to purchase land on Sonoma Mountain to build their future dream home, the Wolf House.  Upon re-reading Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World together, they decided to plan their own journey around the world on a small yacht they planned to build themselves. After many delays, the sailed to the South Seas.  Charmian would write her first book about their travels, entitled, The Log of the Snark (1915) which first appeared serially in Mid-Pacific Magazine.  The book provided a daily log of their adventures traveling through the South Seas.  Charmian drew from the writing of Isabel Bird for inspiration.  Due to Jack’s serious health issues, the couple had to abandon their ambition to travel the world and return to the Bay Area from Sydney, Australia. The Log was well received by reviewers, who described the book as a “vivacious” “account of their remarkable adventure.” Charmian also wrote two more books that drew from their Snark journey: Our Hawaii  and Our Hawaii: Islands and Islanders.  These works reflected upon the changes on the islands between 1907 and 1916 and deplored the rapid changes brought about by tourism. When they returned from the South Seas, Charmian was thrilled to discover she was pregnant.  She gave birth to her only child, Joy, on June 19, 1910.  Due to complications during the birth, Joy tragically only survived 38 hours.  And though she and Jack desperately wanted a child, Charmian was never able to carry a child to term due to complications from Joy’s birth.

Then in 1912, tragedy struck again.  Just weeks before they were to move into their custom-made home, the Wolf House, it burned to the ground.  During their lifetimes, both Jack and Charmian thought their home had been destroyed by arson; however, in the 1990s a forensic study of the site revealed that the fire had been caused by the spontaneous combustion linseed oil-soaked rags.

Beginning with London’s classic novel, The Sea-Wolf, Charmian edited most of London’s writing.  She also collaborated and contributed passages to many other works, most notably The Valley of the Moon and The Mutiny of Elsinore.  The couple continued to travel throughout their marriage.  They sailed from Baltimore around Cape Horn to Seattle in a four-masted ship, traveled to Mexico and took several long trips to Hawaii.  But Jack’s health began to decline in 1914 and he died of uremia at the age of forty in 1916.   Charmian was left with a mountain of debt and the ranch to take care of with the help of Jack’s stepsister, Eliza.  Over the next decade, Charmian arranged for the publication of all of Jack’s finished and unfinished work including:  The Human Drift, Jerry of the Islands, Michael, Brother of Jerry, The Red One, On the Makaloa Mat, Hearts of Three, and Dutch Courage and Other Stories.  Encouraged by Jack’s publisher at Macmillan, Charmian wrote and published a two-volume biography about her husband, The Book of Jack London (1921). During the 1920s and 1930s Charmian traveled throughout Europe where she promoted her own writing and secured translations of Jack’s.  Sometimes speaking to upwards of 23,000 people, Charmian remained a celebrity.

But, in 1935, after a terrible riding accident that nearly took her life, Charmian was visited by a young biographer named Irving Stone.  Thirty-three-year-old Stone seduced Sixty-three-year-old Charmian and convinced her to sign away her rights to both Jack’s story and her own.  His biography, entitled Sailor on Horseback condemned Charmian as an airhead who hindered her husband’s career more than helped it.  In reaction to this violation of her privacy, Charmian burned many of her early diaries and letters that Stone had nefariously gained access to and locked her papers away at the Huntington Library.  Until recently, when the first full length biography about Charmian’s life:  Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author Adventurer by Iris Jamahl Dunkle, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2020, little was known about Charmian’s life.  Due to the this, many of Stone’s inaccurate myths about Charmian continue to be printed in biographical writing about Jack London.

After Jack’s death, Charmian continued to date men and famously had a short relationship with Harry Houdini.  She died at age 83 in 1955.  Her ashes are buried with her husbands under a volcanic rock at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen, CA.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s book Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer is now available for purchase. Click here to buy.


For information about joining Charmian’s Circle, click here.

 

 

 

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