The Accursed Page 49

  For there was, as Upton had come to believe, following the shrewd cultural analysis of Nietzsche, a deep, true, primitive self—most often betrayed by the moral cowardice of the public man.

  At Upton’s instigation the men had been exchanging letters for the past year—voluminous letters—doggedly earnest on Sinclair’s side and fervid, and florid, on London’s—extolling the crimes of capitalism and the virtues of Socialism. Upton had urged London to accept the invitation of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society to be its first president, and London had declined initially, but allowed himself to be cajoled, and eventually won over. Each young writer had sent inscribed copies of his books to the other—Upton seemed to be the more impressed, rapidly reading the stirring pages of The Sea Wolf, London’s new best seller, only just published and already in its eighth printing; he’d written to London in San Francisco—“You are a ‘real’ writer—I am but a ‘muckraker.’ But I hope I can recognize literary genius when I confront it.”

  Weeks had passed, without London responding. At last, when Upton received a scrawled card from London, he’d been dismayed by the bluntness of London’s remarks: “The Socialist sentiment of your work is faultless but I am afraid that your temperamental lack of touch—your ‘sex- attitude’—is anathema to my own view of the subject.”

  Lack of touch! Sex-attitude! Upton Sinclair was utterly baffled what this might mean, and had no one whom he dared ask—certainly not his wife.

  HOW BUSY THE New Year and spring of 1906 had been for Upton Sinclair! Having agitated for Jack London to be president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, he’d felt obliged to help organize the plenary meeting in New York City at Carnegie Hall; his co-founders Clarence Darrow and Florence Kelly, though supportive of the effort, did not live in the vicinity of New York, and were too busy with other matters to participate. Upton had only just recovered from the ordeal of rebutting a flood of attacks following the publication of The Jungle, and what he believed to be a major article for the influential journal Everybody’s—“The Gospel According to St. Marx”—completed in record time, even for Upton Sinclair. (Yet, fast as Upton could write, typing so rapidly he was in danger of wearing out a new typewriter ribbon within a week, and developing cramps in both his hands, he was uneasily aware that Jack London could write faster, as well as far more successfully—though London hadn’t begun publishing until 1900, by 1905 he’d already published ten books, each of them having created an extraordinary “stir” with the public.) Lately Upton was obliged to commute to New York City several times a week, by train; it would have been a felicitous time to meet with Meta, and see little David, and work out a reconciliation with his family, and yet—somehow, Socialist obligations took precedence over mere personal life, and Upton never found time.

  Since Meta had moved out of the farmhouse on Rosedale Road, Upton’s eating habits were yet more sporadic. It was painful to him to see, in the reflections of store windows in Princeton, how, in his mid-twenties, he still resembled an adolescent male of seventeen or eighteen; so many hours of hunching at his writing desk had permanently rounded his shoulders, like the shoulders and backs of those poor mill-worker children whom Mother Jones had presented to horrified audiences, as examples of the exploited. “Well—no one has exploited me. I have done it myself!” Upton’s eyes, which were nearsighted, watered easily; he had not yet found time to visit an eye doctor and acquire a new prescription for his lenses. His health was beginning to be a chronic worry to him despite his strict diet and habits of cleanliness; a Socialist specialist in nutrition had advised him to fast as frequently as possible, avoiding meat, fish, and eggs, as it was now known that such a regimen led to an increase in the metabolic rate, or energy—though Upton had to confess, he felt no more energetic than ever, and often felt enervated and even discouraged—a predilection he had to fight against, vigorously. Set beside his hero Jack London—in his own eyes, at least—Upton envisioned himself as a sort of quasi-male, or stunted male—as London had so uncannily perceived, Upton lacked the temperament for touch—for human contact.

  Yet Upton had married an attractive young woman, a fact that often bedazzled him. How, and why?—he would have said that he loved his young wife, and hoped to be a reasonably good husband to her, yet, when they were apart, as they were so frequently since the publication of The Jungle, Upton had difficulty remembering what Meta looked like; and his little son was interchangeable, Upton thought, to his shame, with any number of other young babies . . .

  Suddenly in Upton’s New York life there were so many young women—so many people! And many were recent immigrants to the United States, or the sons and daughters of immigrants, like the Lithuanians Upton had interviewed in Chicago, as background for The Jungle; in New York City, residents of immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side—“teeming” and “lawless” as the Hearst newspaper called them—were drawn to the Socialist cause, and impressed Upton Sinclair with their vitality and passion. They were German, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, as well as Lithuanian and Russian—their heavily accented English was frequently incomprehensible to him, even as their emotions were vivid and direct and so very different from the veiled and obscure emotions of the class to which he and Meta Fuller were born.

  “You won’t accompany me to the rally, Meta? I wish you would—it will be an historic event.”

  How many times Upton had pleaded with his wife, whose political sentiments, he’d thought, had been near-identical with his own, and whose methodical, meticulous editing of his manuscripts—often, line by line, and hour by hour—had been invaluable to him; but his voice expressed a sort of wistful yearning and childish hurt.

  “You would meet Jack London! It will be quite an occasion—all the newspapers will write about us. We are hoping to take up a collection afterward—this will be a unique opportunity. ‘Revolution Now’ is the title of Jack’s speech—he has sent a telegram.”

  Meta had murmured a vague reply. For Upton had asked her numerous times to come to this “historic” rally—many times, very many times, he’d extolled the virtues of Jack London, as of other Socialist comrades, to her. But of late, she’d declined with no excuse except that she was tired.

  Once, shortly before Meta had taken David away to live with her parents on Staten Island, the young couple had had a painful exchange.

  “But, Meta—the opportunity to meet Jack London—!”

  “But, Upton—I’ve had the opportunity to meet Upton Sinclair. And what of that?”

  Meta’s nervous laughter rang in his ears for some time after, utterly baffling to him.

  IN HIS JOURNAL for May 28, 1906, which was the eve of the rally at Carnegie Hall, Upton Sinclair grimly noted:

  In a time of Revolution, private lives are of no significance. Marriage, family, tradition—all bourgeois customs, propagating hypocrisy and capitalist exploitation—are doomed.

  “He will be here. He will not let us down.”

  Yet by 7:45 p.m., on the evening of May 28, Jack London had not yet arrived at Carnegie Hall for the program which was scheduled to have begun at 7 p.m. Since he’d joined the Socialist cause Upton had discovered that it wasn’t uncommon for Socialist rallies to be delayed—sometimes canceled at the last minute—as it wasn’t uncommon for the rallies to be haphazardly organized—but the audience awaiting Jack London this evening was unusually restive; there was a tension in the air resembling the tension before an electrical storm. Many individuals refused to be seated but were milling about in the foyer and the aisles—these were excitable, bellicose men who bore little resemblance to the young students from Columbia University, New York University, City College and other area universities and colleges for whom the Society had been organized.

  Belatedly the organizers were realizing that a good portion of the audience had come expressly to hear Jack London speak, not as the president of the fledgling Socialist society but as the handsome young author of the enormously popular Call of the Wild which had sold more than one mi
llion copies; in spite of London’s reputation as a writer of adventure stories, there were a number of well-dressed women in the audience who didn’t appear, to the cursory eye, to be likely Socialists.

  On Fifty-seventh Street, outside Carnegie Hall, as if unwilling to pay the small price of admission until they were certain that Jack London had arrived, were men who, judging by their rough-hewn clothes, and their air of masculine aggressiveness, might have stepped out of The Sea Wolf, London’s new, wildly best-selling novel of a tyrannical sea captain in the mode of a Nietzschean Übermensch—a novel that, to Upton Sinclair’s astonished envy, had sold out its initial printing of forty thousand copies before publication.

  Amid all this commotion, and the mounting anxiety of the rally organizers, Upton Sinclair yet had to marvel—what a wonder it was, a writer of his generation had so swiftly attained such stature with the masses, of a kind he could never dream of attaining! Though his commitment to the masses was absolute, and in his most private fantasies he dreamt of being a martyr to the cause like Eugene Debs, brutally beaten by strike-breaking police, thrown into prison . . . emerging with renewed dedication . . . “The Socialist cause has found its great poet-visionary—and he is my age, or nearly! My brother, and my friend.”

  It was nearing 8 p.m. Jack London had not yet arrived. When the acting president of the Society addressed the audience, with a plea for just a few more minutes’ patience, he was greeted with jeers and boos amid scattered applause. Clearly there was a division in the hall between those who were committed Socialists—for whom the rally was the principal draw of the evening—and those who had come to hear Jack London speak—for whom the rally, if not the Socialist cause itself, was incidental. Some of the roughly dressed men who’d been milling about on the sidewalk outside had now found their way inside, and were jostling individuals in the aisles. With an air of wonderment Upton Sinclair murmured aloud—“We are approaching chaos—catastrophe! How has this happened!”

  In fact the blame might lie with Upton himself—he’d been so adamant with the nominating committee, insisting that Jack London was their man; he’d tried several times, without success, by mail and telegram, to convince London that he should arrive in New York City on the day before the rally, or, at the very least, early in the afternoon of May 28. But, for some reason Upton could not comprehend, since it suggested a reckless confidence utterly absent in himself, London had assured him that he wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in arriving at Carnegie Hall “precisely on time”—if his sea voyage from San Francisco to Miami wasn’t delayed beyond a few hours, or the train from Miami to New York City . . . which was, as Upton discovered to his horror, due to arrive in Grand Central Station at 6:35 p.m. By telegram, Upton had pleaded with London to move back his travel time, by at least a half-day; to arrive in New York just twenty-five minutes before he was scheduled to address the Society seemed very risky—“You will make us all very anxious, and yourself as well. Please reconsider!” London’s reply had been blithe, bemused: “Spare yourself ‘anxiety,’ comrade—Jack London guarantees a Juggernaut of a performance.”

  Upton had been so chagrined by this exchange, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his fellow organizers the exact time London’s train was due. Some measure of guilty embarrassment prevented him, as he’d hesitated to confide frankly in his wife about London, as well. It was a principle of his Socialist vow—as it had been a principle, previously, of his Christian character—that he made every effort to be positive; that is, resolutely to avoid negation, as a self-defeating strategy of action. From the great American pragmatic philosopher William James he’d taken the admonition to simulate faith, where faith may be flagging, in order to revive and resuscitate faith; as a young undergraduate at City College, he’d been impressed by no philosopher more than James, in the matter of “pragmatic truth”—Truth is not something that resides in a principle. Truth is something that happens to a principle.

  This, Upton had tried to explain to his wife, whose knowledge of philosophy was limited to those fragments of “great thoughts” she’d been taught at Sweet Briar College—“As Darwin has taught us, the species are ever evolving, as specimens within species must evolve, to survive, so too truth must ‘evolve’—it can’t remain fixed.”

  “ ‘Truth must evolve’—how very convenient for liars.”

  Upton had frowned at Meta’s frivolousness. Whenever he tried to speak seriously to her, she joked; whenever he tried to joke with her, she responded blankly.

  It hadn’t always been this way, he was sure—when they’d first met, only just a few years before. Then, Meta had been a very sweet, soft-spoken and amiable girl, if not uncommonly beautiful or striking—quick to laugh at Upton’s jokes, quick to sympathize with his ideas, and eager to hear him speak, at length, on “The Gospel According to St. Marx” and its variants.

  Naively, he’d thought the woman to be his soul mate.

  A THUNDEROUS ROAR of cheers!—Jack London had arrived.

  “He’s here! At last—thank God . . .”

  It was 8:12 p.m. London was more than an hour late. But the boisterous audience, that had seemed on the verge of anarchy, was immediately placated, like a great brainless beast. Backstage, where he’d been pacing in a state of extreme agitation, Upton felt a wave of utter, ecstatic relief—not just the Socialist cause had been rescued, but Upton and the other organizers, who’d begun to fear for their physical well-being but could not bring themselves to flee the premises.

  Upton hurried out to greet London, who was making his way down the center aisle of the hall, like a politician, or a celebrated prizefighter, his thick dark hair attractively windblown; London was in an ebullient mood, very friendly, pausing to shake hands with admirers and autograph-seekers. It had been understood that London would arrive at the rear door of the hall, on Seventh Avenue, to be spared just such a situation, but it was clear that London greatly enjoyed the scene, as did his female companion—a small gypsy-like woman in colorful attire, clamped to his arm.

  Hurriedly, in the melee at the front of the hall, Upton introduced himself to Jack London who, flush-faced and enlivened, and smelling frankly of alcohol, shook his hand so hard that Upton winced; then, like a long-lost relative, grappled him in a bear-like embrace that left Upton breathless. “ ‘Upton Sinclair’—comrade! You are exactly as I’d envisioned”—London laughed heartily at this remark which was meant as playful chiding, if not outright sarcasm. Upton too laughed, nervously—he felt a thrill of worry, that one or more of his ribs had been cracked in Jack London’s embrace.

  “My woman—Miss Charmian. My loyal consort.”

  Again, London laughed heartily—though clearly he was proud of his companion; in the gutter press, the caption beneath her photograph was “ ‘The Call of the Wild’: Jack London’s Other Wife.” Charmian! Seemingly, the woman had no surname. Upton was surprised to see her for he’d been given to understand—by London—that London wouldn’t be bringing her with him to New York, but—here she was, preening like royalty: a surprisingly squat little person with a garishly made-up pug-face and a silk turban wound about her head who took so little notice of “Upton Sinclair” that she might have thought him an usher at the rally, whose responsibility was to escort her to her reserved seat in the front row.

  Upton’s second surprise was that London didn’t want him to introduce him to the audience—“No, no! These people haven’t come to hear you talk about ‘Jack London’—they’ve come to hear ‘Jack London.’ And I’ll oblige them now.”

  It was a measure of the man’s high spirits and his consummate confidence in himself that he strode up onto the stage without hesitation, and to the podium, very like a prizefighter, shaking his fists in the air both to acknowledge the deafening roars of applause, and to evoke an even greater volume. Several minutes were required for the audience to subside to the point at which London could be heard, his mouth close to the microphone as he shouted, with no preamble: “Revolution now! Revolution no
w! And again I say unto ye—Revolution now!”

  Again, the hall erupted in clapping, foot-stamping, and cheers; again, London had to wait for the hall to quiet.

  Upton had taken his seat beside squat little Charmian, in a bit of a daze. His temples throbbed, his eyes watered. He’d been so distracted for the past forty-eight hours he had virtually forgotten to eat and was now light-headed and weak in the knees. How close they’d come to pandemonium, if London had not arrived just in time! It was thrilling to Upton now, to hear his hero speak in a powerful dramatic voice, hunching his broad shoulders to lean forward, gripping the sides of the podium. The audience that had been so restless was now hushed in reverent anticipation.