Here is Jack London\u2019s writing chair, given to the California Writers
\nClub Sacramento in 1954 and donated to the Jack London Museum in 1977 by loyal
\nclub members concerned about the safe keeping of a chair belonging to a famous
\nauthor. Photo by Tina Stidman
SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) –<\/b> While researching the history
\nof the California Writers Club Sacramento, our 100th- year
\nanniversary will be celebrated Oct. 18, I came across a newspaper article from
\n1955. It described our branch\u2019s 30th-anniversary celebration at a
\nlocal hotel. Referenced was the presence of a chair that Jack London used when
\nwriting. <\/p>\n
Attendees pawned over it and had great fun posing for
\nphotos in the famous author\u2019s chair. The chair had purportedly been given to
\nthe club by London\u2019s widow. He had died nine years earlier at the age of 40. I
\nthought to myself, boy, Jack London\u2019s chair here in town? The reporter who
\nwrote this article surely got snookered by a masterful publicity stunt.<\/p>\n
Soon after, I found another newspaper article, dated 10
\nyears later, covering our 40th anniversary. This article pictured our first President
\nEdna Becsey, now in her 60s, seated in \u201cJack London\u2019s chair.\u201d So the myth about
\nthe chair still lingered. But this time, intriguing details emerged: the year
\nit was donated and the name of the person to whom it was donated. <\/p>\n
Moreover, the chair, \u201csquat, spool-backed swivel chair
\n(wearing) the scars of more than a half-century,\u201d was written by syndicated
\ncolumnist Helen Bottel, one of our own members. I wondered if there might be
\ntruth to this tale, as farfetched as it seemed.<\/p>\n
The widow \u201cdonor\u201d mentioned in the article was Jack
\nLondon\u2019s second wife, Charmian. The couple had built the Glen Ellen ranch
\ntogether. Although Charmian was known to suffer dementia in her later years, a
\nrelative of Jack\u2019s was giving possessions away on her behalf in the 1950s. The
\narticle said that in 1954, the chair was gifted to a Mrs. Pratt.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The aforementioned Mrs. Pratt and husband, Henry Noyes
\nPratt, would have known Charmian London from the early days of the California
\nWriters Club formed in Alameda County in the first decade of the 1900s, as all
\nwriters ran in the same circles in the Bay Area, Sonoma County and even south
\nto Monterey County. <\/p>\n
The Pratts were very involved and knew the likes of first
\nand second California Poet Laureates Ina Coolbrith and Henry Meade Bland. Pratt
\nedited the Overland Monthly, which belonged to a Western Writers Club, and was
\na prolific poet and lyricist. <\/p>\n
But back to Sacramento: By the time that Pratt first
\ncrossed paths with Sacramento writers in 1925, he was newly installed as the
\nCalifornia Writers Club president. <\/p>\n
Mary West Mills, who wrote about women\u2019s issues such
\nas childcare, had come to Sacramento to give a writing class. Noting the
\nsuccess of a group calling themselves Sacramento Writers, she encouraged them
\nto join the California Writers Club. <\/p>\n
Although living in Oakland, California Writers Club
\nPresident Pratt liked Sacramento for its heritage of the Gold Rush, the Pony
\nExpress and the long-range electrical distribution lines.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s political heart and a roaring economy fed
\nby hearty industries appealed to him. Pratt liked movies and Sacramento was
\nbecoming a favorite location for Hollywood. The city was home to the Senator
\nHotel, considered the finest on the Pacific Coast, and to the Crocker Art
\nMuseum. <\/p>\n
Concerned about dusty roads from Sacramento to Oakland
\nthat complicated travel to meetings, Pratt urged the Sacramento writers to form
\ntheir own off shoot, \u201cBranch #1,\u201d of the California Writers Club. <\/p>\n
Eleven years after the formation of \u201cBranch #1,\u201d the
\nPratts moved to Sacramento where he accepted the esteemed position of curator
\nof the Crocker Art Museum. He became a beloved local figure. After Pratt died
\nin 1944, his wife Nita, stayed. <\/p>\n
The thought that Nita might have received Jack
\nLondon\u2019s chair on behalf of Charmaine London, then donated it to our club,
\nposed a new concern. <\/p>\n
If this were true, where was the chair?\u00a0 Had it ended up in someone\u2019s garage? Had it
\ngone by way of a local junk yard, its significance forever lost in garbage? The
\nPratts left no children. Few members of the club from that time were still
\nalive.<\/p>\n
On a whim, I sent the dark newspaper photo of the
\nchair to the Jack London Museum in Glen Ellen, asking if someone might
\nrecognize it. While this was too easy a solution and the outline was barely
\nvisible, it was worth a try. <\/p>\n
Museum historian and volunteer coordinator Susan St.
\nMarie wrote back that they couldn\u2019t make out what the chair looked like. With
\nhelp from the Center for Sacramento History, I received a lighter copy to
\nforward. St. Marie wrote that there were four Jack London chairs in their
\ninventory and she would see if the chair was there. <\/p>\n
A breathless trail of excitement came with this
\ninquiry, even if only a small possibility, to think that something so important
\nhad once been in the care of our club. Not weeks passed but when word came that
\nthey had located the chair, sitting in the Jack London cottage, elation rang
\nout. The chair was safe. Hope had paid off. <\/p>\n
But how the chair got there remained a mystery. Then
\nWard Eldredge, State Parks curator for the Glen Ellen area, weighed in.
\nConsulting old records, he identified the date of the donation made to the
\nmuseum: 1977. <\/p>\n
Eldredge\u2019s records corroborated the belief that the
\nchair was given to Pratt by London\u2019s widow, Charmian. Eldredge found out that
\nthe principal donor was Irene Donelson, the wife of local attorney Ken Donelson
\nwho together had written, \u201cWhen You Need a Lawyer and Married Today, Single
\nTomorrow,\u201d published by Doubleday. Irene was said to be the first woman to
\nattend McGeorge College of Law in the late 1940s. <\/p>\n
Also listed as a donor was long-time member Gladys Morse,
\nsister of the first President, Edna Becsey, who was photographed sitting in the
\nchair. <\/p>\n
State Parks archives suggest that Gladys might have
\nmade the initial inquiry about donating. So loyal was Gladys to the club that
\nshe was known to have never missed a meeting in decades. Also in the records
\nwas a hint of backstory, \u201c\u2026based on material left by her deceased sister\u2026\u201d Edna
\nBecsey. <\/p>\n
What was the backstory? By now, because both sisters,
\nEdna and Gladys, were deceased and neither left offspring, the materials left
\nby Becsey will remain hidden.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, St. Marie invited us to the Jack London
\nMuseum to see \u201cour\u201d chair. So, on March 8, six of us made the 90-minute drive
\nto Glen Ellen. There, St. Marie took us on a three-hour tour of the grounds. In
\nthe cottage, we saw our chair. We could imagine Jack London sitting there,
\nwriting some of his stories and novels. <\/p>\n
In the visit\u2019s aftermath, we are relieved to know that
\nfor more than two decades, the Sacramento area was entrusted with a historical
\nartifact, and that our leaders did the right thing by returning London\u2019s chair
\nto the safety of his beloved property in Glen Ellen. Leave it to a group of
\nwriters to look into the future, beyond their own mortality, by returning a
\npriceless artifact in plain sight just where it belonged.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Kimberly A. Edwards, recent past president
\nof the California Writers Club Sacramento, is chairing a group putting together
\n\u201c100 Years of Writing Excellence in Sacramento\u201d on Oct. \u00a019 at Northridge Country Club. Contact
\ncwcSacramentwriters.org for information on attending and making donations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here is Jack London\u2019s writing chair, given to the California Writers Club Sacramento in 1954 and donated to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[31472,748,31470,5554,393,4884,31471,31467,257,31469,16,15,31468],"class_list":{"0":"post-60864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-100-years-of-writing-excellence","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-california-writers-club-sacramento","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-jack-london","15":"tag-lifeleisure","16":"tag-london","17":"tag-northridge-country-club","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-your-home"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114422635741355913","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}