Part 1

_The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair_

_The Autobiography of_ UPTON SINCLAIR

New York HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC.

Printed in the United States of America

_Preface_

All through my seventy-one years of writing life--I started at thirteen--I have had from my readers suggestions that I should tell my own story. When I was halfway through those writing years I accepted the suggestion and wrote a book called _American Outpost_. The major part of that book, revised and brought up to date, is incorporated in this volume.

I put myself in the position of a veteran of many campaigns who gathers the youngsters about his knee. He knows these youngsters cannot really share the anguish and turmoil of his early years, for they belong to a new generation which is looking to be entertained and amused. So the old campaigner takes a casual and lighthearted tone.

If any old-timer is offended by this--well, there are any number of serious books, plays, and pamphlets of mine that he can read, plus an anthology and a selection of letters written to me by the really great writers of our time. If that is not enough he can travel to the University of Indiana and there, in the Lilly Library, he can read the 250,000 letters that have been written to me over the years--and the carbon copies of my replies. After he has read all this, I shall have written more.

_Contents_

_Preface_ v

I _Childhood_ 3

II _Youth_ 28

III _Genius_ 53

IV _Marriage_ 75

V _Revolt_ 99

VI _Utopia_ 127

VII _Wandering_ 147

VIII _Exile_ 169

IX _New Beginning_ 191

X _West to California_ 212

XI _The Muckrake Man_ 222

XII _More Causes--and Effects_ 243

XIII _Some Eminent Visitors_ 254

XIV _EPIC_ 268

XV _Grist for My Mill_ 278

XVI _Lanny Budd_ 291

XVII _Harvest_ 303

XVIII _A Tragic Ordeal_ 310

XIX _End and Beginning_ 318

XX _Summing Up_ 327

_Books by Upton Sinclair_ 331

_Index_ 333

_List of Illustrations_

(_The illustrations will be found between pages 166 and 167. All but the last three were supplied by the Upton Sinclair Collection, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Indiana._)

Priscilla Harden Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair, Sr.

Upton Sinclair at the age of eight

Upton Sinclair at twenty-seven, when he was writing _The Jungle_

Winston Churchill reviews _The Jungle_

George Bernard Shaw at Ayot-St. Lawrence, about 1913

Mary Craig Sinclair and Upton Sinclair in Bermuda, 1913

George Sterling, his wife, Carrie, and Jack London

Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz

Sergei Eisenstein, about 1933

Upton Sinclair during the EPIC campaign, 1934

Upton Sinclair and Harry Hopkins, 1934

_Flivver King_ in Detroit, 1937

Upton Sinclair, about 1960, with autographed picture of Albert Einstein

Upton Sinclair standing before his home in Monrovia, California

May Hard Sinclair and Upton Sinclair, 1962

Upton Sinclair with seventy-nine of the books he has written

_The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair_

_1_

_Childhood_

I

My first recollection of life is one that my mother insisted I could not possibly have, because I was only eighteen months old at the time. Yet there it is in my mind: a room where I have been left in the care of a relative while my parents are taking a trip. I see a little old lady, black-clad, in a curtained room; I know where the bed is located, and the oilstove on which the cooking is done, and the thrills of exploring a new place. Be sure that children know far more than we give them credit for; I hear fond parents praising their precious darlings, and I wince, noting how the darlings are drinking in every word. Always in my childhood I would think: “How silly these grownups are! And how easy to outwit!”

I was a toddler when one day my mother told me not to throw a piece of rag into a drain. “Paper dissolves, but rag doesn’t.” I treasured up this wisdom and, visiting my Aunt Florence, remarked with great impressiveness, “It is all right to throw paper into the drain, because it dissolves, but you mustn’t throw rags in, because they don’t dissolve.” Wonder, mingled with amusement, appeared on the face of my sweet and gentle relative. My first taste of glory.

Baltimore, Maryland, was the place, and I remember boardinghouse and lodginghouse rooms. We never had but one room at a time, and I slept on a sofa or crossways at the foot of my parents’ bed; a custom that caused me no discomfort that I can recall. One adventure recurred; the gaslight would be turned on in the middle of the night, and I would start up, rubbing my eyes, and join in the exciting chase for bedbugs. They came out in the dark and scurried into hiding when they saw the light; so they must be mashed quickly. For thrills like this, wealthy grown-up children travel to the heart of Africa on costly safaris. The more bugs we killed, the fewer there were to bite us the rest of the night, which I suppose is the argument of the lion hunters also. Next morning, the landlady would come, and corpses in the washbasin or impaled on pins would be exhibited to her; the bed would be taken to pieces and “corrosive sublimate” rubbed into the cracks with a chicken feather.

My position in life was a singular one, and only in later years did I understand it. When I went to call on my father’s mother, a black-clad, frail little lady, there might be only cold bread and dried herring for Sunday-night supper, but it would be served with exquisite courtesy and overseen by a great oil painting of my grandfather in naval uniform--with that same predatory beak that I have carried through life and have handed on to my son. Grandfather Sinclair had been a captain in the United States Navy and so had his father before him, and ancestors far back had commanded in the British Navy. The family had lived in Virginia, and there had been slaves and estates. But the slaves had been set free, and the homestead burned, and the head of the family drowned at sea in the last year of the Civil War. His descendants, four sons and two daughters, lived in embarrassing poverty, but with the consciousness, at every moment of their lives, that they were persons of great consequence and dignity.

II

Being interested in the future rather than the past, I always considered ancestors a bore. All I knew about mine were a few anecdotes my mother told me. Then my friend Albert Mordell, who was writing a paper for a historical magazine, came upon my great-grandfather. He wrote me: “The life of your ancestors is a history of the American navy.” It amused him to discover that a notorious “red” had such respectable forefathers, and he had a manuscript called _The Fighting Sinclairs_, which may someday be published. Meanwhile, since every biography is required to have ancestors, I quote a summary that Mr. Mordell kindly supplied. Those not interested in ancestors are permitted to skip.

* * * * *

Commodore Arthur Sinclair, the great-grandfather of Upton, fought in the first American naval battle after the Revolution, he being a midshipman on the _Constellation_, when it fought the _Insurgente_, in 1798. He was also in the latter part of the war with Tripoli. He was on the _Argus_ in the first cruise of the War of 1812, and captured many prizes. He fought in the leading battle of Lake Ontario under Commander Chauncey. The battle was between the _Pike_, on which he was captain, and the _Wolf_. He also a little later had command of the entire squadron on the upper lakes. He commanded the _Congress_ in its cruise to South America in 1818, carrying the commissioners to investigate conditions, and on its cruise was born the Monroe Doctrine, for the commissioner’s report led to the promulgation of the Doctrine. He also founded a naval school at Norfolk. When he died in 1831, the flags of all the ships were ordered at half-mast, and mourning was ordered worn by the officers for thirty days. He was an intimate friend of practically all the naval heroes in the War of 1812.

He had three sons, Arthur, George T., and Dr. William B., all of whom became officers in the old navy and resigned in 1861 to join the Confederacy. Arthur, who is Upton’s grandfather, was with Perry in Japan in the early fifties. He also commanded a ship in the late fifties--the _Vandalia_--and was compelled to destroy a village of cannibals on an island in the Pacific.

His brother, George T., was in the famous voyage of the _Potomac_ around the world in the early thirties, which went to attack a town in the Malay Islands for some ravages upon an American ship. He also was with Commander Elliott, the Lake Erie hero, on the _Constitution_ in the Mediterranean. He was in the famous Wilkes exploring expedition around 1840, when they discovered the Antarctic continent; and, like the rest of the officers, he had trouble with Wilkes, whom they had court-martialed. He also served in the African Squadron hunting slavers in the early fifties, and later in the home squadron in the _Wabash_ under Commander Paulding. It was on this ship that the famous filibuster, William Walker, who made himself dictator of Nicaragua, surrendered to Paulding.

The third brother, Dr. William B. Sinclair, was in the Mediterranean Squadron with Commander Isaac Hull about 1840. He was also in the African Squadron. All these three brothers were in the Mexican waters during the war, but saw no active service there. At the opening of the Civil War, they became officers in the Confederate Navy and saw various services.

Arthur was compelled to burn his ship the _Mississippi_ at the battle of New Orleans to prevent its falling into the hands of his friend (now his enemy) Farragut. He was drowned on a blockade runner when leaving Liverpool toward the end of the war. George built a ship in England for the Confederacy, but it was never taken over by them because the English took hold of it. Dr. Sinclair served as physician in the Confederate Navy.

These three men also had four sons who became officers in the Confederate Navy. Arthur had two sons in this navy--Arthur, Jr., and Terry. Arthur, Jr., an uncle of Upton, was in the battle between the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_, and wrote an account of it. He served two years on the _Alabama_, and was in the famous fight with the _Kearsarge_, and left a book about his experiences: _Two Years on the Alabama_.

His brother, Terry, also an uncle of Upton, was on the Confederate Cruiser _Florida_, the most important ship next to the _Alabama_, for two years. This was captured unlawfully, and Terry was made a prisoner of war, but was soon released. He left a magazine article about his experience. George T.’s son, William H., commanded a prize ship taken by the _Alabama_. Dr. William B.’s son, William B., Jr., was drowned at the age of eighteen from the _Florida_ because he gave his oar to a shipmate who could not swim.

III

My father was the youngest son of Captain Arthur Sinclair and was raised in Norfolk. In the days before the war, and after it, all Southern gentlemen “drank.” My father became a wholesale whisky salesman, which made it easy and even necessary for him to follow the fashion. Later on he became a “drummer” for straw-hat manufacturers, and then for manufacturers of men’s clothing; but he could never get away from drink, for the beginning of every deal was a “treat,” and the close of it was another. Whisky in its multiple forms--mint juleps, toddies, hot Scotches, egg-nogs, punch--was the most conspicuous single fact in my boyhood. I saw it and smelled it and heard it everywhere I turned, but I never tasted it.

The reason was my mother, whose whole married life was poisoned by alcohol, and who taught me a daily lesson in horror. It took my good and gentle-souled father thirty or forty years to kill himself, and I watched the process week by week and sometimes hour by hour. It made an indelible impression upon my childish soul, and is the reason why I am a prohibitionist, to the dismay of my “libertarian” friends.

It was not that my father could not earn money, but that he could not keep it. He would come home with some bank notes, and the salvation of his wife and little son would depend upon the capture of this treasure. My mother acquired the habit of going through his pockets at night; and since he never knew how much he had brought home, there would be arguments in the morning, an unending duel of wits. Father would hide the money when he came in late, and then in the morning he would forget where he had hidden it, and there would be searching under mattresses and carpets and inside the lining of clothing--all sorts of unlikely places. If my mother found it first, you may be sure that my father was allowed to go on looking.

When he was not under the influence of the Demon Rum, the little “drummer” dearly loved his family; so the thirty years during which I watched him were one long moral agony. He would make all sorts of pledges, with tears in his eyes; he would invent all sorts of devices to cheat his cruel master. He would not “touch a drop” until six o’clock in the evening; he would drink lemonade or ginger ale when he was treating the customers. But alas, he would change to beer, in order not to “excite comment”; and then after a week or a month of beer, we would smell whisky on his breath again, and the tears and wranglings and naggings would be resumed.

This same thing was going on in most of the homes in Maryland and Virginia of which I had knowledge. My father’s older brother died an inebriate in a soldiers’ home. My earliest memory of the home of my maternal grandfather is of being awakened by a disturbance downstairs, and looking over the banisters in alarm while my grandfather--a Methodist deacon--was struggling with his grown son to keep him from going out when he was drunk. Dear old Uncle Harry, burly and full of laughter, a sportsman and favorite of all the world--at the age of forty or so he put a bullet through his head in Central Park, New York.

IV

Human beings are what life makes them, and there is no more fascinating subject of study than the origin of mental and moral qualities. My father’s drinking accounted for other eccentricities of mine besides my belief in prohibition. It caused me to follow my mother in everything, and so to have a great respect for women; thus it came about that I walked in the first suffrage parade in New York, behind the snow-white charger of Inez Milholland. My mother did not drink coffee, nor even tea; and so, when I visited in England, I made all my hostesses unhappy. No lady had ever been known to smoke in Baltimore--only old Negro women with pipes; therefore I did not smoke--except once. When I was eight years old, a big boy on the street gave me a cigarette, and I started it; but another boy told me a policeman would arrest me, so I threw the cigarette away, and ran and hid in an alley, and have never yet recovered from this fear. It has saved me a great deal of money, and some health also, I am sure.

The sordid surroundings in which I was forced to live as a child made me a dreamer. I took to literature, because that was the easiest refuge. I knew practically nothing about music; my mother, with the upbringing of a young lady, could play a few pieces on the piano, but we seldom had a piano, and the music I heard was church hymns, and the plantation melodies that my plump little father hummed while shaving himself with a big razor. My mother had at one time painted pictures; I recall a snow scene in oils, with a kind of tinsel to make sparkles in the snow. But I never learned this wonderful art.

My mother would read books to me, and everything I heard I remembered. I taught myself to read at the age of five, before anyone realized what was happening. I would ask what this letter was, and that, and go away and learn it, and make the sounds, and very soon I was able to take care of myself. I asked my numerous uncles and aunts and cousins to send me only books for Christmas; and now, three quarters of a century later, traces of their gifts are still in my head. Let someone with a taste for research dig into the Christmas books of the early eighties, and find a generous broad volume, with many illustrations, merry rhymes, and a title containing the phrase “a peculiar family.” From this book I learned to read, and I would ask my mother if she knew any such “peculiar” persons; for example, the “little boy who was so dreadfully polite, he would not even sneeze unless he asked you if he might.” He sneezed by accident, and “scared all the company into the middle of next week.”

While arguments between my father and my mother were going on, I was with Gulliver in Lilliput, or on the way to the Celestial City with Christian, or in the shop with the little tailor who killed “seven at one blow.” I had Grimm and Andersen and _The Story of the Bible_, and Henty and Alger and Captain Mayne Reid. I would be missing at a party and be discovered behind the sofa with a book. At the home of my Uncle Bland there was an encyclopedia, and my kind uncle was greatly impressed to find me absorbed in the article on gunpowder. Of course, I was pleased to have my zeal for learning admired--but also I really did want to know about gunpowder.

Readers of my novels know that I have one favorite theme, the contrast between the social classes; there are characters from both worlds, the rich and the poor, and the plots are contrived to carry you from one to the other. The explanation is that as far back as I can remember, my life was a series of Cinderella transformations; one night I would be sleeping on a vermin-ridden sofa in a lodginghouse, and the next night under silken coverlets in a fashionable home. It all depended on whether my father had the money for that week’s board. If he didn’t, my mother paid a visit to her father, the railroad official in Baltimore. No Cophetua or Aladdin in fairy lore ever stepped back and forth between the hovel and the palace as frequently as I.

V

When _The Metropolis_ was published in 1908, the New York critics said it was a poor novel because the author didn’t know the thing called “society.” As a matter of fact, the reason was exactly the opposite; the author knew “society” too well to overcome his distaste for it. Attempting to prove this will of course lay me open to the charge of snobbery; it is not good form to establish your own social position. But, on the other hand, neither is it good form to tell about your drunken father, or the bedbugs in your childhood couch; so perhaps one admission will offset the other. What I am doing is explaining a temperament and a literary product, and this can be done only by making real to you both sides of my double life--the bedbugs and liquor on the one hand, the snobbery on the other.

My maternal grandfather was John S. Harden, secretary-treasurer of the Western Maryland Railroad. I remember going to his office and seeing rows of canvas bags full of gold and silver coin that were to go into pay envelopes. I remember also that the president of the road lived just up the street from us and that I broke one of his basement windows with a ball. I was sent to confess my crime and carry the money to pay for it.

Grandfather Harden was a pillar of the Methodist Church, which was not fashionable; but even so, the leaders of Baltimore’s affairs came to his terrapin suppers, and I vividly recall these creatures--I mean the terrapin--crawling around in the backyard, and how a Negro man speared them through the heads with a stout fork, and cut off their heads with a butcher knife. Apparently it was not forbidden for a Methodist to serve sherry wine in terrapin stew--or brandy, provided it had been soaked up by fruitcake or plum pudding.

I recall the long reddish beard of this good and kindly old man and the large bald spot on the top of his head. It did not occur to me as strange that his hair should grow the wrong way; but I recall that I was fascinated by a mole placed exactly on the top, like a button, and once I yielded to a dreadful temptation and gave it a slap. Then I fled in terror to the top story of the house. I was brought down by my shocked mother and aunts, and ordered to apologize. I recollect this grandfather carving unending quantities of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and hams; but I cannot to save me recall a single word that he spoke. I suppose the reason the carving stands out in my mind is that I was the youngest of the family of a dozen or so and therefore the last to get my plate at mealtimes.

I recall even better my maternal grandmother, a stout, jolly old lady, who made delightful ginger cookies and played on the piano and sang little tunes to which I danced as a child:

Here we go, two by two, Dressed in yellow, pink and blue.

Mary Ayers was her maiden name, and someone who looked up her family tree discovered that she could lay claim to several castles in Ireland. The family got in touch with the Irish connections, and letters were exchanged, with the result that one of the younger sons came emigrating--a country “squire,” six feet or more, rosy-cheeked, and with a broad brogue. He told us about his search for a job and of the unloving reception he met when he went into a business place. “‘Git oot,’ said the man, and so I thought I’d better git oot.” Not finding anything in Baltimore, our Irish squire wound up on the New York police force--a most dreadful humiliation to the family. My mother, of a mischievous disposition, would wait until her fashionable niece and nephew were entertaining company, and then inquire innocently: “By the way, whatever became of that cousin of ours who’s a policeman up in New York?”

My mother’s older sister married John Randolph Bland, named for John Randolph, the Virginia statesman. This Uncle Bland, as I called him, became one of the richest men in Baltimore. Sometime before his death, I saw him scolded in a country club of his home city because of his dictatorial ways. The paper referred to him as “the great Bland”--which I suppose establishes his position. He knew all the businessmen of the city, and they trusted him. So he was able to sell them shares in a bonding concern he organized. I remember walking downtown with him one day when I was a child. We stopped at a big grocery store while he persuaded the owner to take shares in the company he was founding. Its name was the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, and of course he became its president. You have probably heard of it because it has branches all over America and in many of the world’s capitals.