Dutch Courage and Other Stories
เด เดเดกเดฟเดฏเต เดฌเตเดเตเดเดฟเดจเตเดเตเดเตเดฑเดฟเดเตเดเต
Iโve never written a line that Iโd be ashamed for my young daughters to read, and I never shall write such a line!โ
Thus Jack London, well along in his career. And thus almost any collection of his adventure stories is acceptable to young readers as well as to their elders. So, in sorting over the few manuscripts still unpublished in book form, while most of them were written primarily for boys and girls, I do not hesitate to include as appropriate a tale such as โWhose Business Is to Live.โ
Number two of the present group, โTyphoon Off the Coast of Japan,โ is the first story ever written by Jack London for publication. At the age of seventeen he had returned from his deep-water voyage in the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, and was working thirteen hours a day for forty dollars a month in an Oakland, California, jute mill. The San Francisco Call offered a prize of twenty-five dollars for the best written descriptive article. Jackโs mother, Flora London, remembering that I had excelled in his school โcompositions,โ urged him to enter the contest by recalling some happening of his travels. Grammar school, years earlier, had been his sole disciplined education. But his wide reading, worldly experience, and extraordinary powers of observation and correlation, enabled him to command first prize. It is notable that the second and third awards went to students at California and Stanford universities.
Jack never took the trouble to hunt up that old San Francisco Call of November 12, 1893; but when I came to write his biography, โThe Book of Jack London,โ I unearthed the issue, and the tale appears intact in my English edition, published in 1921. And now, gathering material for what will be the final Jack London collections, I cannot but think that his first printed story will have unusual interest for his readers of all ages.
The boy Jackโs unexpected success in that virgin venture naturally spurred him to further effort. It was, for one thing, the pleasantest way he had ever earned so much money, even if it lacked the element of physical prowess and danger that had marked those purple days with the oyster pirates, and, later, equally exciting passages with the Fish Patrol. He only waited to catch up on sleep lost while hammering out โTyphoon Off the Coast of Japan,โ before applying himself to new fiction. That was what was the matter with it: it was sheer fiction in place of the white-hot realism of the โtrue storyโ that had brought him distinction. This second venture he afterward termed โgush.โ It was promptly rejected by the editor of the Call. Lacking experience in such matters, Jack could not know why. And it did not occur to him to submit his manuscript elsewhere. His fire was dampened; he gave over writing and continued with the jute mill and innocent social diversion in company with Louis Shattuck and his friends, who had superseded Jackโs wilder comrades and hazards of bay- and sea-faring. This period, following the publication of โTyphoon Off the Coast of Japan,โ is touched upon in his book โJohn Barleycorn.โ
The next that one hears of attempts at writing is when, during his tramping episode, he showed some stories to his aunt, Mrs. Everhard, in St. Joseph, Michigan. And in the ensuing months of that year, 1894, she received other romances mailed at his stopping places along the eastward route, alone or with Kellyโs Industrial Army. As yet it had not sunk into his consciousness that his unyouthful knowledge of life in the raw would be the means of success in literature; therefore he discoursed of imaginary things and persons, lords and ladies, days of chivalry and what notโanything but out of his priceless first-hand lore. At the same time, however, he kept a small diary which, in the days when he had found himself, helped in visualizing his tramp life, in โThe Road.โ
The only out and out โjuvenileโ in the Jack London list prior to his death is โThe Cruise of the Dazzler,โ published in 1902. At that it is a good and authentic maritime study of its kind, and not lacking in honest thrills. โTales of the Fish Patrolโ comes next as a book for boys; but the happenings told therein are perilous enough to interest many an older reader.
I am often asked which of his books have made the strongest appeal to youth. The impulse is to answer that it depends upon the particular type of youth. As example, there lies before me a letter from a friend: โRuth (she is eleven) has been reading every book of your husbandโs that she can get hold of. She is crazy over the stories. I have bought nearly all of them, but cannot find โThe Son of the Wolf,โ โMoon Face,โ and โMichael Brother of Jerry.โ Will you tell me where I can order these?โ I have not yet learned Ruthโs favorites; but I smile to myself at thought of the re-reading she may have to do when her mind has more fully developed.
The youth of every country who read Jack London naturally turn to his adventure storiesโparticularly โThe Call of the Wildโ and its companion โWhite Fang,โ โThe Sea Wolf,โ โThe Cruise of the Snark,โ and my own journal, โThe Log of the Snark,โ and โOur Hawaii,โ โSmoke Bellew Tales,โ โAdventure,โ โThe Mutiny of the Elsinore,โ as well as โBefore Adam,โ โThe Game,โ โThe Abysmal Brute,โ โThe Road,โ โJerry of the Islandsโ and its sequel โMichael Brother of Jerry.โ And because of the last named, the youth of many lands are enrolling in the famous Jack London Club. This was inspired by Dr. Francis H. Bowley, President of the Massachusetts S.P.C.A. The Club expects no dues. Membership is automatic through the mere promise to leave any playhouse during an animal performance. The protest thereby registered is bound, in good time, to do away with the abuses that attend animal training for show purposes. โMichael Brother of Jerryโ was written out of Jack Londonโs heart of love and head of understanding of animals, aided by a yearsโ-long study of the conditions of which he treats. Incidentally this book contains one of the most charming bits of seafaring romance of the Southern Ocean that he ever wrote.
During the Great War, the English speaking soldiers called freely for the foregoing novels, dubbing them โThe Jacklondons"; and there was also lively demand for โBurning Daylight,โ โThe Scarlet Plague,โ โThe Star Rover,โ โThe Little Lady of the Big House,โ โThe Valley of the Moon,โ and, because of its prophetic spirit, โThe Iron Heel.โ There was likewise a desire for the short-story collections, such as โThe God of His Fathers,โ โChildren of the Frost,โ โThe Faith of Men,โ โLove of Life,โ โLost Face,โ โWhen God Laughs,โ and later groups like โSouth Sea Tales,โ โA Son of the Sun,โ โThe Night Born,โ and โThe House of Pride,โ and a long list beside.
But for the serious minded youth of America, Great Britain, and all countries where Jack Londonโs work has been translatedโyouth considering life with a purposeโ"Martin Edenโ is the beacon. Passing years only augment the number of messages that find their way to me from near and far, attesting the worth to thoughtful boys and girls, young men and women, of the authorโs own formative struggle in life and letters as partially outlined in โMartin Eden.โ
The present sheaf of young folkโs stories were written during the latter part of that battle for recognition, and my gathering of them inside book covers is pursuant of his own intention at the time of his death on November 22, 1916...FROM THE BOOKS.
