The Accursed (53 page)

“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 million 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 now! 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.

“ ‘No Compromise’ is the essence of the Proletarian movement . . . Capitalism is the Sole Enemy . . . If one Socialist comrade will bring another into the fold, and he yet another, the entire United States will be won by the year 1912 . . . We are witnessing the death-struggle between the two great forces of Greed, the chiefs of the Beef Trust and the chiefs of the Standard Oil Trust, for ownership of the United States of America . . . ‘Big Bill’ Haywood’s motto ‘Good Pay or Bum Work’ will soon replace ‘In God We Trust’ as the motto of the United States . . .” London spoke in a loud, incantatory manner, like one repeating memorized phrases, yet with great effect. Though his words were familiar ones—at least, to Upton Sinclair and other Socialists in the hall—they were greeted with applause, as if they were highly original, and daring. Upton sat in the first row of seats, below the podium, gazing up at his hero with the unstinting admiration of a kicked dog for his master, who has left off kicking him for the moment and is being kind to him, capriciously, yet wonderfully.

When London’s flushed face crinkled with schoolboy slyness, you could see that he was about to make a joke—“Far be it from yours truly the much-derided ‘Boy Socialist’—as my detractors have called me, in an effort to discredit the noble cause for which I stand—to deny that Socialism is a
menace;
why, our stated purpose is to wipe out, root and branch, all capitalistic enterprises of present-day society”—and all erupted with laughter, including Upton; when London’s face grew sober, or seemingly sober—“our cry is a simple appeal to the downtrodden exploited working-man of America and of the world—
Organize! Organize! Organize!
”
—
the hall became hushed, as if London were uttering a prayer. Like the refrain of a ballad, these few words of London’s returned, each time with more vehemence: “
Organize! Organize!
And again I say unto ye—
Organize!
And the world will be ours! And human destiny will be ours!
Revolution now! Revolution now! Revolution now!
”