Fame and Intrigue in the Archives: Is the Legendary Jack London a Founder of the California Writers Club?

By Kimberly A. Edwards

To hear it from reporter Herman Whitaker or labor attorney Austin Lewis, they, along with poet George Sterling and Jack London, started the California Writers Club.

Yet, if you were to listen to the Alameda Press Club, comprised mainly of women, they would say – not so fast.

Handwritten notes from early meetings suggest that the California Writers Club emerged from the press club. In fact, Alameda Press Club minutes and other sources reflect a name change to the California Writers Club on March 7, 1911. Notes suggest that this occurred after a “conference” with Whitaker, Lewis, Sterling, and London.

Lewis and fellow socialist Whitaker kept up the chant that they, along with London and Sterling – the affable Bohemian mentored by Ambrose Pierce, who was arguably Jack London’s best friend (decades later, he would commit suicide in the Bohemian Club) – founded the California Writers Club.

In the 1925 West Winds, a Book of Verse, California’s Poet Laureate, Ina Coolbrith, claimed that the club was started in 1907 by a small group around the San Francisco Bay.

In one written reference, the “seven” of “1907” was crossed out and replaced with a “nine.” To this day, the California Writers Club consistently uses 1909 as its birth year.

It is conceivable that the four men bent on starting the club shared work in the Oakland Hills when Sterling came up from Carmel, Whitaker down from Piedmont, Austin over from San Jose, and London, well, debarked from his boat, the Snark.

We know that in the year 1909, Lewis was serving as president of the Alameda Press Club. It was a new club. Perhaps he was hoping for a writing club molded in the vision of his three literary buddies.

A socialist who had taken Jack London to political meetings, Lewis had written more than two dozen books, including The Rise of the American Proletarian. Even as Lewis served as president of the Alameda Press Club, the California Writers Club would later claim him as their first leader, suggesting a jostling that would later come to the surface.

But the undercurrent can’t always be gleaned from records. They can muddle facts rather than clarify them. The seeds of the puzzle between the male foursome and the women-dominated Alameda Press Club may be rooted in a difference of expectations.

This disparity can be partly attributed to an incident in February 1910, when the Alameda Press Club hosted a reception for Mrs. Frank Leslie. By now, Oakland journalist Torrey O’Connor had ascended to the Press Club presidency. She was the vivacious mother-in-law of University of California, Berkeley, art instructor Perham Nahl, who would design the California Writers Club’s logo.

O’Connor would later lead the California Writers Club’s Fiction Section at the Claremont Hotel, where the standard attire was gowns. She had written numerous articles for Leslie’s Weekly, owned by the late husband of Mrs. Leslie for whom the Press Club reception was planned.

Mrs. Leslie, born in Louisiana, was a woman of note. At age 20, she divorced her first husband. She divorced the second one to marry Frank Leslie, head of the New York “Leslie” publishing empire. It is said that on her honeymoon, she met “Poet of the Sierras” Joaquin Miller. They began a 30-year affair. Frank Leslie died in 1880. Her subsequent marriage to the brother of Oscar Wilde, 16 years her junior, ended in disaster. While living in Europe, she changed her name to the Baroness de Bazus, based on questionable Huguenot ancestors. Leslie sold her “Leslie” business in 1903 and would later redeem herself as champion of women’s suffrage.  

Alas, reputations can be complex. Like her lover Miller, Mrs. Leslie had a flair for publicity. The 1910 reception for Mrs. Leslie, put on by the Press Club, did not sit well with now-past president Lewis. A week after the event, he wrote to Press Club Secretary Mrs. Augusta Fowler:   

I have a few remarks concerning the present condition of the Press Club, which I would like to lay before you and the committee for consideration.

… there is no doubt that the reception…was an unqualified success and reflects every credit upon those who undertook to carry it through. It cannot be said, however, that such an affair is beneficial to the best aims of the Press Club, but on the contrary, it is apt to be a very distinct detriment. It is of no value to the organization to be regarded as a social factor…If it is the object of the Press Club to foster talent, the young, obscure and poor ….the element was conspicuously absent last Tuesday night and, not only that element, but other people who have identified themselves with the intellectual influence…I hope this sort of thing will not be likely to occur again, for I do not think that the organization could stand another such. It is only fair, however, to say that I have received assurances that there will be no other entertainment of this character.

At about this time, President Torrey O’Connor was finishing her 1910 term following the official name change to the California Writers Club. Records indicate that James Henry Lafferty was coming in as president of what now appeared to be a merged club. Records suggest that Lewis may have dropped out entirely. Whitaker remained an active member of the California Writers Club, asserting that Sterling’s and London’s names remain on membership lists of the early California Writers Club. London and Whitaker both gave writing presentations to the membership.

Handwritten minutes two years hence still listed Jack London as a member. He contributed a story to a 1914 anthology by the California Writers Club, edited by Whitaker. The two had become good friends. After London died in 1916, the California Writers Club listed him as an Honorary Member, and the club Bulletin devoted an entire issue to his memory.

Decades later, Lewis was asked by California Writers Club President Dr. William S. Morgan to write his recollection of exactly who started the California Writers Club, since two versions still swirled around. Lewis wrote:

It was started by a small group of us – Jack London, Herman Whitaker, George Sterling, and myself, with a few other people…it was started with the idea of forming a somewhat distinguished group but the general attitude to literary matters on the part of the members very soon disposed of that notion and the originators of the enterprise retired in disgust.

So who started the California Writers Club?

Was it the four men or the Press Club? A letter from London to former Press Club President Torrey O’Connor in the months before he died in 1916 mentions the California Writers Club, but doesn’t provide insight into his own role in the early years. The letter makes clear he knows and respects Ms. O’Connor.

It’s also clear that while the women of the Alameda Press Club changed the name to the California Writers Club, the men were determined to hang onto the glory.