Lot 178

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Lot 178
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Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
Jack London, "The Cruise of the Snark" Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check
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Description:

London Jack

Jack London, The Cruise of the Snark Annotated Manuscript and Signed Check

 

Lot consists of 3pp 1st revision typed manuscript of The Cruise of the Snark with almost 35 handwritten edits/words in Jack London's hand; along with a signed check dating from the era of the Snark's construction.

 

In the spring of 1907, Jack London (1876-1916), along with his wife Charmian (1871-1955) and a small crew, set out for a modern maritime adventure aboard the Snark, their 45' long custom built sailboat. Over the next 2 years, the Londons would sail west and south across the Pacific Ocean, exploring Hawaii, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tahiti, Australia, and other tropical locales. London later recounted his travel experiences in a non-fiction illustrated account called The Cruise of the Snark, published by The Macmillan Company in New York in 1911.

 

These typed manuscript galleys correspond to pages 284-291 of London's final 1st edition of The Cruise of the Snark. This excerpt, which is part of Chapter XV: "Cruising in the Solomons," describes the torments of flying cockroaches and six-inch-long biting centipedes, while the Londons and their crew were also beset with fevers, infections, rashes, and parasites. Other dangers included bushmen pirates, tropical storms, and running aground on coral reefs.

 

The galley proofs are oversized, measuring 9.25" x 12" on average overall, and have generously sized margins to accommodate handwritten author's edits. The pages are in very good to near fine condition with expected wear including paper folds, isolated light soiling, and occasional closed tears. The manuscripts dates circa spring 1911.

 

London's edits throughout the manuscript are in pencil and blue pen. On the second page, London has inserted and deleted two commas; corrected the spelling of the name of a Protestant missionary, from "Mr. Caulfield" to "Mr. Caulfeild"; and swapped the word "they" for "canoes." A 4-word note appears verso: "2 Proofs MacDougall." He has written "Dakin" in the top left corner of page three; again corrected the spelling of "Caulfeild"; and replaced "towing in" with "running an anchor with."

 

London also hand-inscribed captions to three remarkable black and white photographs that would become Illustration 98, "Solomon Islands Canoe," Illustration 99, "Men of Kewm - Solomons," and Illustration 100, "Bush-women going to market, Malu, Malaita." He has drawn arrows pointing to text blocks where he wished corresponding illustrations to appear. Other possibly publisher's edits in red are found throughout.

 

The manuscript pages correspond to the following published text found in The Cruise of the Snark. Areas affected by London's edits are in bold.

 

"--her Malaita experiences she has become a changed woman.  Her meekness and humbleness are appallingly becoming, and I should not be surprised, when we return to civilization and stroll along a sidewalk, to see her take her station, with bowed head, a yard in the rear.

 

Nothing much happened at Suava.  Bichu, the native cook, deserted.  The Minota dragged anchor.  It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain.  The mate, Mr. Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever.  Our Solomon sores increased and multiplied.  And the cockroaches on board held a combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade.  They selected midnight for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place.  They were from two to three inches long; there were hundreds of them, and they walked all over us.  When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing, rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds.  They were much larger than ours on the Snark.  But ours are young yet, and haven’t had a chance to grow.  Also, the Snark has centipedes, big ones, six inches long.  We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian’s bunk.  I’ve been bitten twice by them, both times foully, while I was asleep.  But poor Martin had worse luck.  After being sick in bed for three weeks, the first day he sat up he sat down on one.  Sometimes I think they are the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.

 

Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up anchor, and started to beat out the treacherous entrance.  The wind was chopping about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting strong.  Just as we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining open sea, the wind broke off four points.  The Minota attempted to go about, but missed stays.  Two of her anchors had been lost at Tulagi.  Her one remaining anchor was let go.  Chain was let out to give it a hold on the coral.  Her fin keel struck bottom, and her main topmast lurched and shivered as if about to come down upon our heads.  She fetched up on the slack of the anchors at the moment a big comber smashed her shoreward.  The chain parted.  It was our only anchor.  The Minota swung around on her heel and drove headlong into the breakers.

 

Bedlam reigned.  All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the sea, dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody’s way.  At the same time the boat’s crew made a rush for the rifles.  They knew what going ashore on Malaita meant—one hand for the ship and the other hand to fight off the natives.  What they held on with I don’t know, and they needed to hold on as the Minota lifted, rolled, and pounded on the coral.  The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for the topmast.  The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in a puny way to prevent the Minota from being flung farther in toward the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-anchor from out the ballast and rigging up a stock for it.  Mr. Caulfeild, with his mission boys, arrived in his whale-boat to help.

 

When the Minota first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive from every quarter.  The boat’s crew, with rifles at the ready, kept them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they ventured nearer.  And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black and ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their paddles on the perilous edge of the breaking surf.  In the meantime the bushmen were flocking down from the hills armed with spears, Sniders, arrows, and clubs, until the beach was massed with them.  To complicate matters, at least ten of our recruits had been enlisted from the very bushmen ashore who were waiting hungrily for the loot of the tobacco and trade goods and all that we had on board.

 

The Minota was honestly built, which is the first essential for any boat that is pounding on a reef.  Some idea of what she endured may be gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she parted two anchor-chains and eight hawsers.  Our boat’s crew was kept busy diving for the anchors and bending new lines.  There were times when she parted the chains reinforced with hawsers.  And yet she held together.  Tree trunks were brought from ashore and worked under her to save her keel and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed and splintered and the ropes that held them frayed to fragments, and still she pounded and held together.  But we were luckier than the Ivanhoe, a big recruiting schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita several months previously and been promptly rushed by the natives.  The captain and crew succeeded in getting away in the whale-boats, and the bushmen and salt-water men looted her clean of everything portable.

 

Squall after squall, driving wind and blinding rain, smote the Minota, while a heavier sea was making.  The Eugenie lay at anchor five miles to windward, but she was behind a point of land and could not know of our mishap.  At Captain Jansen’s suggestion, I wrote a note to Captain Keller, asking him to bring extra anchors and gear to our aid.  But not a canoe could be persuaded to carry the letter.  I offered half a case of tobacco, but the blacks grinned and held their canoes bow-on to the breaking seas.  A half a case of tobacco was worth three pounds.  In two hours, even against the strong wind and sea, a man could have carried the letter and received in payment what he would have laboured half a year for on a plantation.  I managed to get into a canoe and paddle out to where Mr. Caulfeild was running an anchor with his whale-boat.  My idea was that he would have more influence over the natives.  He called the canoes up to him, and a score of them clustered around and heard the offer of half a case of tobacco.  No one spoke.

 

“I know what you think,” the missionary called out to them.  “You think plenty tobacco on the schooner and you’re going to get it.  I tell you plenty rifles on schooner.  You no get tobacco, you get bullets.”

 

At last, one man, alone in a small canoe, took the letter and started.  Waiting for relief, work went on steadily on the Minota.  Her water-tanks were emptied, and spars, sails, and ballast started shoreward.  There were lively times on board when the Minota rolled one bilge down and then the other, a score of men leaping for life and legs as the trade-boxes, booms, and eighty-pound pigs of iron ballast rushed across from rail to rail and back again.  The poor pretty harbour yacht!  Her decks and running rigging were a raffle.  Down below everything was disrupted.  The cabin floor had been torn up to get at the ballast, and rusty bilge-water swashed and splashed.  A bushel of limes, in a mess of flour and water, charged about like so many sticky dumplings escaped from a half-cooked stew.  In the inner cabin, Nakata kept guard over our rifles and ammunition.

 

Three hours from the time our messenger started, a whale-boat, pressing along under a huge spread of canvas, broke through the thick of a shrieking squall to windward.  It was Captain Keller, wet with rain and spray, a revolver in belt, his boat’s crew fully armed, anchors and hawsers heaped high amidships, coming as fast as wind could drive—the white man, the inevitable white man, coming to a white man’s rescue.

 

The vulture line of canoes that had waited so long broke and disappeared as quickly as it had formed.  The corpse was not dead after all.  We now had three whale-boats, two plying steadily between the vessel and shore, the other kept busy running out anchors, rebending parted hawsers, and recovering the lost anchors.  Later in the afternoon, after a consultation, in which we took into consideration that a number of our boat’s crew, as well as ten of the recruits, belonged to this--"

 

In addition to the hand-corrected manuscript is an unnumbered check inscribed overall and signed “Jack London” on the payee line. Issued from the Central Bank of Oakland, California on June 29, 1905 in the amount of $2.00 payable to "E. Lehnhardt.” The plain cream check is stamped in red recto and verso, and bears a star-shaped cancellation mark at center. In near fine condition, with minor closed tear located above cancellation mark. Check measures 6.5" x 2.875".

 

Did Jack London like gum balls? Chocolate eclairs or strawberry ice cream? Possibly. The renowned adventure author wrote this check to Emile Lehnhardt (ca. 1858-1912), sole owner of a successful Oakland, California candy, confectionery, and ice cream concern. Lehnhardt had launched his fledgling business in 1887; he later committed suicide in January 1912. The Saturday, January 27, 1912 issue of the San Francisco Call announced the businessman's death with the headline: "Rich, but Weary of Life, Confectioner Kills Self."

 

Jack London grew up in Oakland, California. He attended elementary school through high school there, and studied at a local waterfront bar named Heinold's First and Last Saloon; the proprietor later lent him tuition money to Berkeley.

 

Jack London wrote dozens of poems, short stories, essays, and novels over a prolific career curtailed by chronic ill-health. With income generated from adventure classics like Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), London was able to purchase a ranch and outfit the Snark.

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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