This indifference almost lost the prospect and other fraternities started to rush Norris. One senior and one junior refused to make the slightest effort either to see the youngster or to come to any decision after they had met him. Discouraging opposition and complete indifference upon the part of a few was met by immediate enthusiasm upon the part of other members. Immediately afterwards, Frank's name was proposed for membership in Delta Xi Chapter of Phi Gamma Delta. Somehow or other, we lived in those days. Hathorn and Norris had dinner that same evening in the men's grill of the old Palace Hotel and the menu probably was thick juicy fillets for which the hotel was famous then as now French fried potatoes, bowls of lettuce salad, with a couple of bottles of Chevalier Cabernet accompanying - all, as Hathorn fondly remembers, for a trifle over a dollar per. With this stirring drama of the sea as a setting, there started here the basis of a cherished friendship which lasted through the life of the pair, for the wet, bedraggled youngster was Norris the freshman. Ralph Hathorn, late that afternoon, saw a young fellow standing near him in the chill of this winter's afternoon without overcoat or protection from the rain or wind and invited the drenched and shivering youth to share his umbrella with him. Thousands of spectators journeyed out to the beach to view the wreck, braving the raging wind and driving rain to witness the heavy seas and great combing breakers pound the ship to pieces on the shore before them. Some time in December of 1890, a heavy storm had driven a large vessel ashore below the Cliff House in San Francisco. How He Became a FijiĪs befitted the man, his introduction to a member of Phi Gamma Delta was intensely interesting.
All the fraternities were unaware of the measure of man who had come into the college life of Berkeley. For the first five months, absorbed in his work, he kept closely to himself making but few acquaintances and no close friends. Eccentric in his dress and still possessed of some French mannerisms from his early student days in Paris, Norris entered college as a special in English literature. Hathorn 1893, to whom and to Brother William Penn Humphreys 1894, I am indebted for this description of the young freshman of twenty. He was a tall, gaunt, sallow-complexioned young fellow, yet strikingly handsome and distinguished in his general appearance, according to Brother Ralph L.
He lived in a house on the north side of Bancroft Way, just east of Dana Street and around the corner from the first Fiji House on that latter street. Left: Frank Norris, from the 1893 group portrait of Delta Xi Chapter.Īfter his return from Paris, Frank Norris went to a small preparatory school, Urban Academy, in San Francisco in the latter 1880s and entered the University of California in the fall of 1890 with the class of 1894. It is Norris the Fiji - Norris the Lovable Fellow - Norris the Man whom we remember and not Norris the Novelist. Such a man as this who had not lived four years with a fellow fraternity man like Norris who had been simply a member of a club in Yale could not appreciate how we of the old guard felt towards this member of the class of 1894 in Delta Xi Chapter.
I remember well his remark: "Didn't your fraternity have any oth er literary light but Frank Norris? You seem to advertise him as such and make a lot out of him!" Some time ago, a graduate member of one of Yale's junior societies had luncheon with me at the Fiji chapter house at the University of California. It is not as a successful novelist that we think of him nor is it to bring up for consideration his powerful influence upon our country's literature, when we speak of Norris we who knew him in the early nineties, love to just feel that we were with him and we are happier because of that lovable contact. I t is far easier to talk about Frank Norris than it is to write about that paragon of true fraternity men. Archives Home Founders Traditions Today in History Historic Sites Leaders Exhibits/References Contactįrank Norris In His Chapter Founder of Pig Dinner, Later Great American Novelist, Was Colorful Figure in his Undergraduate Days
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