New book shows Jack London’s wife Charmian helped shape his works

There is an iconic photo of the writer Jack London, astride his horse in a meadow atop Sonoma Mountain. Reproduced everywhere, from book covers to promotions for trail rides, it is classic Jack. But who was up there on the mountain with him? The photographer was never credited.

Local writer Iris Jamahl Dunkle wondered who took that photo, who perfectly framed the shot to capture the man and horse against a panoramic view of The Valley of the Moon about which he wrote so passionately. It was while researching Charmian London, Jack London’s wife, that Dunkle unlocked the mystery. She saw the picture in a small volume she bought off eBay, “Our Valley of the Moon in Poems and Pictures,” self-published by Nell Griffin Wilson in the early 1940s. By then a widow for more than 20 years, Charmian contributed that photo for the book, a photo she herself took.

It’s the kind of nugget that thrills a researcher like Dunkle. The seemingly small discovery speaks to some of the many undisclosed truths about Charmian — that she was an accomplished photographer, writer and skillful editor in her own right and a thoroughly modern career woman at the dawn of the modern age. She also was, like so many women in history, somewhat lost in the long shadow of her husband.

Dunkle’s new book, “Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer” (University of Oklahoma Press), is the first comprehensive full-length biography devoted solely to the other half of the early 20th century power couple. And it shows Charmian was far more than Jack’s wife.

“They were intellectual equals,” said Dunkle, a poet, English instructor at Napa Valley College and a Jack London scholar. “He had this super-fast and interesting intellect, and she was right there with him. That’s something a lot of people don’t attribute to her.”

When the 28-year-old Charmian Kittredge met up-and-coming writer Jack London in 1900, she had what we now call “agency” — a good job as a stenographer with a San Francisco shipping company, a small inheritance invested in a home she used for rental income and financial savvy that allowed her to buy a horse and to travel. The pair met through Charmian’s Aunt Netta, also a writer, who was profiling London for an article in “The Overland Monthly.” Charmian and Jack bonded over books and ideas.

“She was a new woman,” Dunkle said. “She was a type of woman, and there were a lot during that era, that were independent and intellectual. They don’t get written about a lot, but she definitely was of her era and was an extraordinary woman.”

It is commonly accepted that Charmian served as London’s loyal helpmate, typing his manuscripts and doing secretarial work. But Dunkle discovered that Mrs. London was more of a partner than an assistant. One big revelation Dunkle unearthed in her research was that Charmian helped write her husband’s novel, “The Valley of the Moon,” hashing out characters, plots and settings with Jack and writing entire sections of the manuscript at his request while the pair traveled on the tall ship “Dirigo” around Cape Horn in 1912.

That discovery led her to dig deeper and conclude that Charmian had played an integral part in shaping many of Jack’s other works and had been a writer herself before she met the brash 24-year-old determined to write his way out of poverty.

Jack composed in scrawling cursive and Charmian would type up his pages. He frequently asked her to edit as she saw fit. He used her ending to his 1914 novel “The Mutiny of the Elsinore.”

“She was working on his books with him,” Dunkle said. “She got no credit for that whatsoever. That didn’t bother her at the time. But that story was never told. It was not in their best interests to tell that story, because Jack London was the brand.”

A story that needed to be told

Growing up in Sebastopol, Dunkle visited Jack London State Historic Park and the House of Happy Walls Museum in the sixth grade. There was scant mention of the woman who was London’s “mate” in work and play, who shared his adventures in the South Seas and published her own well-received account, “The Log of the Snark,” and who built the arts and crafts-style bungalow after Jack’s death in 1916 and lived there for decades.

Now Charmian is getting her due. The past slight has since been rectified in the museum’s new exhibit, which Dunkle contributed to. And her new biography both advances the scant scholarship on Charmian and brings her to life in an engaging story about a tenacious woman ahead of her time.

“She never adhered to gender norms,” Dunkle said. “She would never ride sidesaddle. She thought that was ridiculous, that she might fall off and it was so uncomfortable. Women couldn’t purchase pants in the late 1800s, so she took a skirt and cut it in the middle and sewed it into culottes.”

Until now, the only notable books on Charmian London were by Sonoma State history professor Clarice Stasz: “American Dreamers: Jack and Charmian London” in 1988 and “Jack London’s Women” in 2001. Neither focused strictly on Charmian.

Stasz is pleased someone has carried her early research even further to flesh out Charmian’s story. Dunkle brought to light a lot of new information that wasn’t available 30 years ago, she said.

Dunkle drew heavily from the vivid diaries of Charmian’s mother, Daisy Wiley, who met handsome military officer Willard Kittredge in Salt Lake City midway on her family’s journey by covered wagon from Wisconsin to California. The young couple eventually made their way west, and for two years they ran the American Hotel in Petaluma when Charmian was a baby. It was a happy chapter of life that ended badly when the hotel burned. Daisy died of tuberculosis a few years later, when Charmian was 6. When she was 14, her father died. The orphaned girl fell into the care of her aunt Netta, who introduced her to the Bay Area literary scene but also tried to undermine her confidence.

Earle Labor, the author of “Jack London: An American Life,” had high praise for Dunkle’s work.

“Her assiduous study supplements as well as complements the pioneering works by Clarice Stasz and qualifies as a must-read for all serious London fans and scholars,” said Labor, the 92-year-old dean of Jack London scholars and professor emeritus at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana. Charmian’s photo of Jack on horseback graces the cover of his biography of London.

“Overall, the fascinating story she tells is intimate but objective, sympathetic but authentic,” Labor said. “I think it’s the biography Charmian herself would like to have written.”

Cunning seduction

There are many reasons why Charmian remained an enigma, Dunkle said. One is a common story about women. Charmian’s work with Jack was so consuming — he penned 50 books, hundreds of short stories and numerous magazine articles between 1900 and 1916 — that she had little time for her own writing. Another reason is more sinister.

Dunkle lays out a chilling incident in the beginning of the book that would cloud Charmian’s life and the world’s perception of her and her relationship with Jack. The writer Irving Stone, seeking to write a biography of London, manipulated Charmian into giving him access to carefully guarded papers, including love letters. The book that came out of it, “Sailor on Horseback,” painted her in an unflattering light and forged inaccuracies in the public’s mind that linger to this day, including the intimation that Jack killed himself.

Readers also are drawn into the deep heartache around Charmian’s efforts to have a child. She gave birth to Joy in 1910, but the baby lived less than two days, her spine broken during a difficult delivery with forceps. Charmian also had multiple miscarriages.

After Jack’s death at 40, Charmian lived almost another lifetime, another 40 years. During those decades she worked tirelessly on behalf of his legacy and, with his sister, Eliza Shepard, struggled fiercely to maintain his beloved Beauty Ranch, even through the Depression. She negotiated movie rights for his stories and book translations, work that took her to Europe, where she was toasted at large gatherings. She also wrote her own biography, “The Book of Jack London.”

Dunkle writes Charmian’s story in fluid detail, drawing from Charmian’s diaries as well as her mother’s, from her father’s datebook, from her aunt’s personal letters and from many other sources. She combed the London papers at the Huntington Library in San Marino, state and Sonoma County archives and a collection of London letters and papers at Utah State University. Jack London aficionados opened up their private collections and gleaned new insights about Charmian.

Dunkle had to find just the right publisher who would allow her to write outside the constraints of a stilted scholarly research style to tell a story that would engage a broad readership. She settled on the University of Oklahoma Press, which she said is interested in bringing forward the stories of Western women and indigenous people. The former Sonoma County poet laureate said she first framed many parts of Charmian’s story in poetry before putting them down in prose that would allow people to come to know the lively Charmian as she has.

“The first time I walked through the House of Happy Walls remodel I started crying because it finally was telling Charmian’s story for real,” Dunkle said. “A young girl like myself going to the park would now see someone they could look up to and aspire to become.”

Charmian, who died in 1955, was buried next to Jack but her grave is unmarked, another slight Dunkle would like to see rectified someday.

She said as a scholar, she finds nothing more meaningful than to write a book that will help people understand someone forgotten by history or misunderstood.

“I just hope this book inspires more people to look back and discover trailblazers from an earlier time and to continue to be trailblazers themselves,” she said. “I think it is important, especially now.”