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Letter from Jack London to Charmian Kittredge

Title: Autograph letter from Jack London to Charmian Kittredge
Author: London, Jack
Description: 87 lines, in ink, on rectos of 8 sheets of unlined paper held with a straight pin at top. 6x9¼.An important document from early in his romance with Charmian Kittredge, revealing both his passionate feelings for her and how involved she already had become in his business of writing. Jack also refers to the progress of "The Sea Wolf" and the deal for its serialization in Century Magazine. In Jack London's distinctive hand but with no salutation or signature; the discreet manner of London's letters to Charmain while he was still married to Bessie. Headed "Tuesday letter O.K. (Wednesday) Sept. 2/03." The string of 5 coterminous letters reads: "Dear beautiful Love, I was going to write you such a good letter to-day; but enclosed letters speak for themselves. I must strike while the iron is hot, and sit down at once to grinding out a fuller synopsis of last half of novel than the one I sent, But not only will the $4000.00 be of moment but, from a standpoint of book-selling, it is of tremendous importance for me to run a long serial in the Century. I shall have to discard my hack work at once, and pitch in on the completion of the sea novel. Please return Brett's letter. Also, at once, please type me a copy of Gilder's letter. Also, return Gilder's original letter, for Mr. Brett has asked me to return it to him. • Also, if you are unengaged Sunday evening, Sept. 13th, will you manage somehow to hear me give a lecture before the Oakland socialists? • Dear Love of mine, it will mean much toward making the way easier for us, those $4000. Leaving out all other considerations it may bring us, it will give us our first month together utterly carefree and with nothing to do but enjoy each other and to live! to live! • I have been thinking. How's this for a plan? It will fool everybody. Right on the top of divorce, I engage passage a stateroom on steamer for Japan, & I engage for 'Mr. & Mrs. Jack London.' You do not figure in it. People may be puzzled about me, but about me only. Of course, my first nights or so aboard would not be spent with you. And then, captain of steamer marries us. In meantime, your absence from California leaking out, the papers can be tearing themselves loose and be damned to them. Of course, the legality of all this would have to be rigidly ascertained in advance, and then Edward would not marry us – and – well – I hope, if no more, that the suggestion has given you a merry five minutes. I am asking you to type me a copy of Guilder's letter, for, truth to tell, there are parts of it I cannot make out. • Ah darling, it won't be so long before we embark on the most wonderful adventure of our lives. And I shall not have lied to the reporters when I said I was going around the world. I simply neglected to add that I was going with the most glorious woman in the world."
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Date Published: 1341