In her diary
entry for July 17, 1833, Fanny Kemble wrote about her increasing excitement as
they slowly approached the vicinity of the Falls. A perfect frenzy of impatience seized upon me, she wrote. I could have set off and run the whole way.
When the carriage stopped at their hotel, she raced for a view. I stood upon Table Rock. Trelawny seized me
by the arm, and without speaking a word, dragged me to the edge of the rapids,
to the brink of the abyss. I saw Niagara—Oh God! Who can describe that sight!!![1]
Appropriately,
she did not even try. Her journal—at least in its published version (1990)—ends
there.
I can’t
leave these passages about Niagara Falls without mentioning the story of a
previous literary passion of mine. Jack London. In late June 1894, Johnny
London (he did not alter this to “Jack” until he began writing and publishing
stories) was near Buffalo, New York. He’d been off on quite an adventure—hopping
trains (illegally) all across the country from his home in Oakland. He was eighteen
years old. A school dropout.
He’d come to
the area because he wanted to see Niagara Falls. On June 28, he viewed the
Falls in late afternoon and evening, then decided to sleep in a nearby field so
that he could get a better look at them in the morning.
In his 1907 account
of his tramping around (The Road),
London wrote his first impression of the Falls: Once my eyes were filled with that wonder-vision of down-rushing water,
I was lost. I could not tear myself away …. There was a good moon that
night, and he says that he stayed until after
eleven.[2]
The
following morning, he rose, early, and walked into town. Where he was promptly
nabbed by John Law.[3]
Arrested for vagrancy. Off he went to court for a quick conviction. Then …
thirty days in the Erie County Penitentiary (he could not pay the fine), a grim
place with cells stacked atop one another like animal cages, a grim place full
of grim experiences he writes about at length in the book. He would not see the
Falls again. Released, he headed home (indirectly!), where he returned to
school and began to prepare himself to be a writer.
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| photo included in London's THE ROAD (1907) |
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