Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women

4. Pursuit of the Dream: 1911-14

4 Pursuit of the Dream: 1911–14 The tourist, the leisurely traveler, the comfort-loving motorist would never behold it. Only by toil, sweat, endurance and pain could any man ever look at Nonnezoshe. It seemed well to realize that the great things of life had to be earned. —“Nonnezoshe” In March 1911, four months after the publication of The Heritage of the Desert , Field and Stream presented the first installment of “Down an Unknown Jungle River.” For this issue, the editors prepared a special, bright-red cover with a huge Z slashing from top to bottom of the page, like the famous mark of Zorro. A photograph of Zane appeared center left of the Z, with his name completed in block letters to the right. Although Warner, the magazine’s owner, shrewdly calculated the benefit of this promotion to his magazine, his backing came when Grey badly needed it, and earned Warner his gratitude and loyalty. At the time, few editors were so accepting of his work. Grey’s articles for Field and Stream financed trips that alleviated his crippling depressions , and these trips furnished material that enabled him to move beyond 04.95-132_Paul.indd 95 8/10/05 1:50:07 PM zane grey 96 his Ohio novels, solidifying his stature as an outdoorsman and endowing his Westerns with authenticity. “Down an Unknown Jungle River” appeared almost two years after the trip that it described, and Grey felt so pressured to write over this period that his travel was restricted to overnights in New York City and other places nearby. The Heritage of the Desert, completed between early November 1909 and late January 1910, was a product of his first complete winter in Lackawaxen. Snow came early that year and Grey wrote in a small cottage that had only a small stove and no insulation. The penetrating cold necessitated heavy clothing and every few minutes he had to hold his hand near the fire in order to continue writing.1 In June, when Dan Beard invited him to Connecticut for a visit, he had to decline because he was straining to meet an August deadline on a book for young people.2 The Young Lion Hunter, published in October 1911, appeared six months after The Young Pitcher. This was a simplification of “Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon” and Grey speedily followed with a conversion of “Down an Unknown Jungle River” into Ken Ward in the Jungle (1912), his last book for juveniles. Although Grey did his five boys’ books for money and as insurance against failure with his novels, they were invaluable training in the development of a simple, accessible style that complemented his Westerns and appealed to adolescents, who would be a significant component in his later readership. Grey’s self-imposed confinement in Lackawaxen enabled him to complete these diverse projects, and it stimulated a compensatory daydreaming that he recorded in the pages of his journal. On March 10, 1911, he wrote: I seem to live so much in the future. I am always anticipating something, looking forward to this trip, or planning that one. I am haunted by a yearning to go afar, into the wilds mostly, and yet I know that when I do go, I never find content. Then I long for my home, my books, my family . It is a strange thing, this unrest, this insatiate desire to find the place and the happiness that seem forever just beyond the horizon. But they never are. They are in the depths of my own soul, and I never yet mined that deep.3 Frequently this daydreaming involved women and his powerful attraction to them. In an entry from two years before, he reflected, “For many years it has been my way to look at women, judge them, know them from the side which affected me personally.”4 Women were on his mind when he described the actress Lina Cavalieri, whose photograph he kept on his desk: 04.95-132_Paul.indd 96 8/10/05 1:50:07 PM Cover of Field and Stream, March 1911. 04.95-132_Paul.indd 97 8/10/05 1:50:08 PM zane grey 98 Of all the lovely women whose pictures have fascinated me this one is the most perfect. She is dark, sweet, passionate; her face is oval and pure, her lips exquisite, her eyes like night...