Jack London
Seattle, Wash., Aug. 7. — Jack London the novelist and his wife arrived in Seattle recently, after a 148 days’ voyage around the Horn on the sailing ship Dirigo, and registered at the Hotel Washington. To interviewers he announced that while at sea he completed one novel and made notes for two more.
Jack invented The Literature That Grips. Intentionally, or otherwise, he has led the public to believe that he is the sort of man he writes about. For instance, he hated the conventions, preferring the wilder, freer life of the wild and wooly places where primitive men strip their meat raw from the bones, not minding a little blood, and make savage, guttural noises when they eat.
He wrote a story once about a man in Alaska who was starving to death before he died. A wolf was starting, too. The wolf dragged himself after the man, reasoning to himself thus: “If I can stick it out longer than the man, I can eat him.”
So the man crawled and crawled, and the wolf crawled after him, and by and by the man played possum, and the wolf crept close and prepared to take a bite. But the man drew back just in time, and as the wolf collapsed, the man sank his teeth in the beast’s neck and drank his blood.
That’s the kind of a life for Jack!
Everybody thought it was, but it isn’t.
Mr. and Mrs. London were assigned to rooms 626 and 628, comprising one of the most luxurious suites in the hotel. With them came Nahata, the novelist’s valet, who was given room 619. Nahata is yellow-hued and efficient.
First thing the valet did after unpacking the trunks was to get out the novelist’s pink silk pajamas. In the morning London bathed leisurely, and left the tub reeking delicately of eau de cologne.
Nahata, the velvet-footed, had laid out clean linen while his master slept, and these the novelist donned with the servant’s help. When Mrs. London joined him they descended together to breakfast. London called for a grapefruit. Then a poached egg — one poached egg, d’ye mind — and a bit of toast — without butter. The white of the egg, he stipulated, must be of the consistency of jelly. The toast must be crisp and brittle. He would have his coffee black.
After breakfast he returned to the suite — which, by the way, is done in lavender — and started a new chapter of a novel, in which primitive men like their meat raw and bloody, and make savage, guttural noises in their throats when they eat.
Mr. London’s thousands of admirers will be shocked to learn that his table manners are perfect.
Source: The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois newspaper). August 07, 1912.
