Letters From Jack London Widow Get Slow Service

Letters from author Jack London’s widow have been delivered to a federal courtroom more than half a century after they were written to a judge and his brother.

Three typewritten letters signed by Charmian Kittredge London arrived at the 3rd District Court of Appeal Thursday in a plastic bag stamped “U.S. Mail,” the type used for returning mail damaged in handling or found loose in the mails.

Postal officials said they are trying to determine whether the letters had been lost in the mail since they were written in 1918 and 1937 or were sent more recently by someone who had them in their possession.

Never Know Why

But David Mazer, communications manager at the Postal Service’s Los Angeles Field Division, said it is “highly likely” that it will never be determined which post office forwarded the letters and why they were delayed.

“Finding where that bag came from is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Mazer said. “It’s possible somebody just dropped it all in a mailbox without even putting it into an envelope.”

“It’s a mystery,” said Robert L. Liston, the appellate court’s clerk. “We think the letters were sent to us because they were addressed to Rolfe L. Thompson, who was a justice at this court between 1929 and 1950, but we’re just not sure.”

The first two letters, dated Nov. 9, 1918, and Nov. 16, 1918, appear to be written to Fred Thompson, the justice’s brother, who accompanied Jack London on a Klondike gold-mining expedition. The third letter to Justice Thompson is dated Aug. 11, 1937. The envelope has three 1-cent Ben Franklin stamps attached. All three letters were mailed from Glen Ellen in Sonoma County, where the Londons lived.

For Use in Biography

Mary Robertson, curator of the Huntington Library in San Marino, where the largest collection of Jack London material is stored, suggested that Charmian London sent the two 1918 letters to get material for a biography of her husband--”The Book of Jack London”--published in 1921.

London, author of 52 books, including “Call of the Wild,” died in 1916 at age 40.

Charmian London asked Fred Thompson in one of her letters to lend her a diary he kept when he accompanied Jack London and the writer’s brother-in-law, James Shepard, on an Alaskan gold-mining expedition.

She wrote: “What you tell me about the extent of Jack’s sickness from scurvy is especially interesting--although I can assure you he did not lose all his teeth. He died in possession of most of the lower ones.”

Fred Thompson was the only one of the three who kept a diary of the trip. Charmian London eventually obtained and kept the manuscript. After she died at age 84 in 1955, it was donated to the Utah State University library.

Also in the package of letters were a photograph of Jack and Charmian London; 1930s-era promotional material for the Jack London Ranch in Sonoma, now a state park; a card advertising the publication of Mrs. London’s book, “Our Hawaii;” a handwritten narrative by a lawyer on the flyleafs of a copy of Jack London’s 1913 book, “The Valley of the Moon,” and a list of Jack London’s books.