Books: Harrowed Marrow

(2 of 3)

The building of the tower was urged by Poet Jeffers' wife, who thought the exercise would be good for her husband. The building has proved useful to the whole family, who have there their "silent rooms." To its two-room base, Garth Sherwood and Donnan Call, the Jeffers' twin sons, resort in rainy weather. On the floor above, Mrs. Jeffers, who is devoted to music. Irish folk-songs in particular, has installed a small organ. Poet Jeffers, to whom all music is "just noise." occupies, with a table and a chair, the tiny room above. Here in the mornings, when his slow pulse beats only 40 times a minute, he slowly writes his poems; in the afternoons, when his pulse speeds up to 60, he plants trees, rolls stones.

The family eat and sleep in the house nearby, built also of sea boulders, but shaped after an old Tudor barn in Surrey which Mrs. Jeffers once admired. In the one-room attic the family sleep; downstairs they live their quiet family life. They have no telephone, no electric lights, no servants, but they entertain a few friends now & then. Poet Jeffers chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good deathbed . . . when the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky thumps with his staff, and calls thrice: "Come Jeffers."

Poet Jeffers, though gentle (he has never killed an animal) is not shy; though not shy he is not sociable, seeks neither the companionship of old friends nor acquaintanceship with new. Towards local Californians. as toward the human species as a whole, he is reserved, cold.

Most local Californians reciprocate his attitude. The most notable exception was California's poet, the late George Sterling, who doffed his poetical crown to Poet Jeffers, wrote a hero-worshipping study of him. In spite of this he remains to most Californians more of a cloudy stranger gone native than a sunny native son.

Nest. Poet Jeffers' birthplace was Pittsburgh, in 1887. From North Ireland had come his paternal grandfather. His father, an LL.D. learned in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, had married an orphan 23 years, his junior. John Robinson Jeffers was the first fruit; the second. Hamilton Jeffers, now engaged in astronomical work at Lick Observatory, came seven years later.

John Robinson, at 5, toured Europe with his parents, under his father's tutelage. From 12 to 15 he went to school at Vevey, Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich, Leipzig. At 16 he entered the University of Western Pennsylvania, but when his family moved to Pasadena he switched to Occidental College, Los Angeles, took his bachelor degree. He first met Una Call whose second husband he was later to become, while he was a post-graduate student at the University of Southern California.

In 1907 he accompanied his family again to Europe, entered the University of Zurich, but soon left to study medicine at the University of Southern California. Thence he went to Seattle and, to get some outdoor work, entered the forestry department of the University of Washington. At 25 he received a legacy from an uncle. Independent, he went to live at Hermosa Beach, passed his time swimming and writing verse. In 1913 he married Una Call Kuster.