If Jack London Had Edited Robert Frost

by Dr. Dennis E. Hensley

Jack London (1876-1916) never actually worked as a magazine editor. However, his second wife, Charmian Kittredge London, was the niece of Roscoe Eames, editor of the once-prestigious Overland Monthly. Eames purchased a few freelance pieces from Charmian, including a feature she wrote about Jack London before they were married. Eames also bought several short stories of London’s to publish in Overland Monthly, including “To the Man on Trail,” “In a Far Country,” “The Priestly Prerogative,” and “The Men of Forty Mile.”

Robert Frost (1874-1963) was a contemporary of London’s, even though his first collection of poems, A Boy’s Will, was not published until 1913. It is not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine that had Frost submitted “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to the Overland Monthly as early as 1903, Roscoe Eames might have asked Jack London to look at it and offer an opinion. If he thought that the poem was supposed to be about the Far North, I can imagine that Jack’s comments to Frost would have gone something like this:

Bob -
My wife’s uncle passed along your “Woods” poem to me for a look-see. Not that I’ve ever claimed to be a great poet, but, hey, I did have a limerick in Town Topics in May of 1900. You see it? No? Your loss. Well, at any rate, I’ve made a few comments on the “Woods” piece (and by the way, I love that pen name of yours, “Frost … Snowy Woods,” yeah, I get it, I get it) to let you know why we feel it needs a major rewrite.

WHOSE WOODS THESE ARE, I THINK I KNOW
This is a “given,” Bob. The Canadian government is keeping its claim to most of the wooded areas of the Yukon. Now, stream beds, that’s a different story. A guy could strike a little claim in one of these areas and do some panning for a couple of years, no problem. But woods … well, everyone knows whose woods those are. No mystery.

HIS HOUSE IS IN THE VILLAGE THOUGH
Village? What village? Only the Indians live in villages. White men live in mining towns or out on the trail in trading posts. So, what then, is this guy a half-breed or something?

HE WILL NOT SEE ME STOPPING HERE TO WATCH HIS WOODS FILL UP WITH SNOW
This is a moot point, Bob. Come February in Alaska, nobody sees anyone amidst those blizzards. If you go out into a mess like that and are crazy enough to stand still long enough to watch the snow coming down, you’re gonna be frozen in that same spot until the spring thaws.

MY LITTLE HORSE…
Icks-nay on the horse, pal. Sled-dogs, wolves, malamutes, they’re all believable, but nobody’s going to buy into the idea of a guy riding a horse through the Yukon in winter. It doesn’t gibe with the terrain or the season of year, Bob. Are you with me on this?

… MUST THINK IT QUEER
He’s not the only one, Bob. Some of the guys around the editorial office were really wondering about you. This whole poem … well, it’s pretty wimpy. We were hoping for something a little more rugged. You know, something that comes straight out of the chute, like, “The YUKON - where to lose a glove was to lose a hand!” Our readers really go for that he-man stuff.

TO STOP WITHOUT A FARM HOUSE NEAR
Gold, Bob, gold! Farming is out, mining is in. Nobody goes to the Yukon to grow corn and tomatoes.
Okay, now we’re cooking, Bob-o! “Frozen lake” is good. “Darkest evening of the year” land of the Midnight Sun - yes, yes, now you’re in the groove.

HE GIVES HIS HARNESS BELLS A SHAKE TO ASK IF THERE IS SOME MISTAKE
The “mistake” here, Bob, is the harness bells. Any sourdough who ever gussied up his dog harnesses with jingling bells, even at Christmas, would have been laughed out of Dawson. I once knew a French fur trader named LeBeau up near Chilcoot Pass who tied scalps on his harnesses to warn off would-be dog thieves. And there was a “cheechako” (greenhorn) I met at Bonanza Creek who tied leather streamers to his harnesses because he thought it looked impressive to have them blowing in the wind as he raced by. That guy’s dogs ate him his fourth day on trail, so he probably doesn’t count. But, no, I never heard of any harness bells in the Klondike.

THE ONLY OTHER SOUNDS THE SWEEP OF EASY WIND AND DOWNING FLAKE
Here you are on dangerous ground, Frosty. This borders on direct plagiarism of my short story, “The White Silence,” which ran in Overland Monthly in February 1899. The whole premise of my story was that in the Far North it can get so cold and so quiet, you lose all perspective of things. The snow and wind are the only things that have any impact on you, and they only serve to numb you. This was my idea, pal, mine. True, I did take the premise from Chapter 42, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” in Melville’s Moby Dick, but I was able to condense into one paragraph what it took him an entire chapter to explain. And now - what? - you’re trying a little one upmanship by reducing my one paragraph to two lines? Don’t press your luck, pal.

THE WOODS ARE LOVELY, DARK AND DEEP
Back to the Midnight Sun reference again, are we? A bit redundant, but, okay, we’ll let it slide.

BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP
Wait a minute, wait a minute! You never said this guy was on a mail run from Whitewater to Nome. I thought he was supposed to be just a routine prospector out scouting a strike. Man, this changes the whole focus. No, sorry, Bob, but you can’t suddenly introduce a whole new concept here in the last stanza. You aren’t being fair. Readers need some foreshadowing before you spring this sort of role redirection on them. Suddenly here at the end he becomes a man-with-a-mission? Oh, please, Bob, get real.

AND MILES TO GO BEFORE SLEEP AND MILES TO GO BEFORE SLEEP
It sounds to me like you’re already nodding off.
Look, let me explain something: They pay five cents a word at Overland Monthly and, take it from me, Roscoe Eames is a tight-fist ol’ badger. You won’t find him paying twice for the same line. Either cut the echo or come up with something fresh to end on.

Now, I would be the last person in the world to discourage you, Bobby, but, quite frankly, I don’t see a lot of hope for this “Snowy Woods” piece. Why don’t you leave the Klondike to guys like Robert Service and me? Hey nothing much has been written about New Hampshire or about the entire area “north of Boston.” Why not focus on that instead? Just a thought.

Yours for the Revolution,

Jack London

Copyright © 1997-2008 Dennis E. Hensley
All rights reserved.
Reprinted … permission of author.

Author bio:

“Dr. Dennis E. Hensley is the author of or contributor to numerous nonfiction books and novels, including Man to Man: Becoming the Believer God Called You to Be (September 2003), Write on Target: A Five-Phase Program for Nonfiction Writers (with Holly G. Miller), How to Write What You Love and Make a Living at It, and Alpha [Macmillan] Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours (contributor) . He is a professor of English at the Fort Wayne campus of Taylor University. He is a regional correspondent for Writer’s Digest magazine.”

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