by Frank Norris
After I had been home a month or so, a friend invited me to a meeting of the “Chit-Chat” Club, and I was very much impressed. There was more intellectuality to the square inch of waistcoat than I had thought possible in this town. It was rather heavy, but it was solid — there were bankers with libraries and merchants with microscopes, who encourage “local art”; they affected social questions, and had a blown-in-the-bottle culture that was almost convincing. I had to stand on tiptoe (so to speak) in order to keep up with the level of their statistics, but I must say I was flattered when they asked me to read my paper on the “Bombardment” at the next meeting.
There were many questions I couldn’t answer after that reading. Good Heavens! how should I know about the armament of the fleet of the Powers? They had a long discussion over the embroglio, in which I was left carefully out of the question, but they gave me a vote of thanks, and would have had the essay printed if I hadn’t objected.
The next day I met Leggett. Leggett is the wit of the “6:30” Club, and he wanted me to come around, for the 6:30’S were to dine that night. So I went. The men there were all younger than the Chit-Chats, whom they guyed audibly. They were all coming men — men who hoped soon to arrive — and it seemed to be the club’s office to corner the budding talent of the town. There was a bunch of Overland Monthly men who should have been in the Chit-Chat by this time, but still clung to the youngsters.
I was unanimously elected a member of the 6:30 — the Lord knows why, perhaps because my name begins with “S” and they had got down to the “Rs” in the round of papers delivered each month. At any rate, I found I had to read something of my own at the next meeting. I didn’t say anything about the Chit-Chat paper, but I had no time to do anything else, so I read the “Bombardment.” They are rare wags at the 6:30. Telegraph boys came in with messages from hypothetical publishers at each course bidding for the manuscript (they eat a 75-cent dinner at the Poodle Dog), and they chaffed me every time I tried to put in a flourish that wasn’t written down. Each man, in his order, gave his critique of the essay, and it was very generously damned. I went home and threw the manuscript in the trunk and thought it was played out. Not much.
Next week Wednesday I received a note in a slashing chirography from a lady who “really must insist upon my reading the charming paper that I had recently written before the Century Club, as they had set the subject for that week ‘Athens and the Athenians’ — and they must have it.” I wrote her there was nothing about Athens in the article, and that I was engaged for Thursday. She telephoned me that “Crete would do perfectly, and I simply must come because the arrangements had been made.”
So I stood up and read my paper — I was the only man in the room, and they lorgnetted me without mercy. I was told afterwards that the lady who had invited me had been blackballed four times, and when she had finally been elected she had sworn to get even with the club. But they stood it breathlessly, and the next week they had as bad a paper on “Household Art.”
I had begun to think myself quite a litterateur by this time — everybody spoke of my “Bombardment,” and I couldn’t go to a mauve tea without being introduced as its author.
I read it next at the Geographical Society, sandwiched in between Dr. Harkness’ “Paleolithic Theories” and David Starr Jordan on “Retrograde Movements of the Common Arab.” I was the only one who didn’t have lantern-slides, and the audience of six women and two men filled the Academy of Sciences with their yawns.
Well, I read the “Bombardment” at the Sketch Club next, at the earnest solicitation of the President, who instructed the audience when to applaud — they had the shades down and lighted the studio with brass candlesticks and marigolds. The manuscript was about worn out by this time, but I knew the thing by heart, and fully believed I had been in Canea at the time of the shelling. One more reading, and I felt I should have met every woman worth knowing in town. So when the Fortnightly sent for me I had already acquired a manner, and I did the impressing myself, instead of submitting to the operation. There was a wild striving for intellectuality written on the faces of the Fortnightlies. All of them had written papers themselves — papers crammed with measurements and distances that took hours to look up. It was an off day on account of a protracted Maeterlinck recitation the week before, and all the Vassar girls were absent. There was a rarefied lemonade with wafers passed around after I had performed, and the talk relapsed into the discussion of engagements. An engagement in the Fortnightly is an event, for wildly intellectual girls don’t marry till quite late in life.
I read the paper at Miss Head’s school next, and my fame was confided to the tender mercies of a coming generation. I read it in the assembly hall at Berkeley. I read it in the private salon of Mrs. Beebe, a woman of gush and giggle, who entertains local celebrities on Sunday afternoons.
I am growing old now, but I am still the author of the “Bombardment.” I have made my name and I intend to keep it. I have been offered a six months’ subscription to the Overland for its publication in that magazine, but I know a good thing when I have it, and there are yet clubs in town. For we have begun the revival of culture in San Francisco and have already promised to become a “centre.”
“JULIAN STURGIS”
AT HOME FROM EIGHT TO TWELVE
AN ARTICLE FROM THE WAVE OF JANUARY 1, 1898.
Every window of the house was lighted. The front door was opened for the guest before he could ring and he passed up the stairs, catching a glimpse of the parlors through the portieres of the doors. At the turn of the stairs the second girl in a white lawn cap directed them to the gentlemen’s dressing-room, which was the room of the son of the house. About a dozen men were there already, some rolling up their overcoats into balls and stowing them with their canes in the corners of the room, others laughing and smoking together, and still others who were either brushing their hair before the mirrors, or sitting on the bed in their stocking feet breathing upon their patent leathers, warming them before putting them on. There were one or two who knew no one and who stood about unhappily, twisting the tissue paper from the the buttons of their new gloves, looking stupidly at the pictures on the walls of the room. Occasionally one of the gentlemen would step to the door, looking out in the hall to know if the ladies whom he was escorting were yet come out of their dressing-room, ready to go down.
The house was filling up rapidly, one heard the deadened roll of wheels in the street outside, the banging of carriage doors, and an incessant rustle of stiff skirts ascending the stairs. From the ladies’ dressing-room came an increasing soprano chatter, while downstairs the orchestra around the piano in the back parlor began to snarl and whine louder and louder. About the halls and stairs one caught brief glimpses of white and blue opera cloaks edged with swans-down, alternating with the gleam of a starched shirt bosom and the glint of a highly polished silk hat. Odors of sachet and violets came and went elusively, or mingled with those of the roses and pinks. An air of gaiety and excitement began to spread throughout the whole house.
But an hour later the dance was in full swing. Almost every number was a waltz or a two-step, the music being the topical songs and popular airs of the day set to dance music. Some of the couples waltzed fast whirling around the rooms, bearing around corners with a swirl and swing of silk skirts, the girl’s face flushed and perspiring, her eyes half closed, her bare white throat warm, moist and alternately swelling and contracting with her slow breathing. On certain of these girls the dancing produced a peculiar effect. The continued motion, the whirl of the lights, the heat of the room, the heavy perfume of the flowers, the cadence of the music, even the physical fatigue reacted in some strange way upon their oversensitive feminine nerves, the monotony of repeated sensation producing some sort of mildly hypnotic effect, a morbid hysterical pleasure, the more exquisite because mixed with pain. These were the girls whom one heard declaring that they could dance all night, the girls who could dance until they dropped.
About the d
oors and hallways stood the unhappy gentlemen who knew no one, watching the others dance, feigning to be amused. Some of them, however, had ascended to the dressing-room and began to strike up an acquaintance with each other, smoking incessantly, discussing business, politics and even religion.
In the ladies’ dressing-room two of the maids were holding a long conversation in low tones, their heads together. Evidently it was concerning something dreadful. They continually exclaimed “Oh” and “Ah,” suddenly sitting back from each other, shaking their heads, biting their nether lips. Out in the hall on the top floor the servants in their best clothes leant over the balustrade nudging each other, talking in hoarse whispers or pointing with thick fingers, swollen with dishwater. All up and down the stairs were the couples who were sitting out the dance, some of them even upon the circular sofa in the hall of the first landing.
Supper was served in the huge billiard room in the basement, and was eaten in a storm of gaiety. The same parties and “sets” tried to get together at the same tables.
One ate oysters a la poulette, terrapin, salads and croquettes, the wines were Sauternes and Champagnes. With the nuts and dessert, the caps came on and in a few minutes were cracking and snapping all over the room.
Six of the unfortunates who knew no one, but who had managed, through a common affliction, to become acquainted with each other, gathered at a separate table. They levied a twenty-five cent assessment upon each other and tipped the waiter a dollar and a half; this one accordingly brought them a bottle of Champagne apiece, in which they found consolation for all the ennui of the evening.
After supper the dancing began again. The little stiffness and constraint of the earlier part of the evening was gone; by this time nearly everybody, except the unfortunates, knew everybody else. The good dinner and the Champagne had put them all into an excellent humor, and they all commenced to be very jolly. They began a Virginia reel still wearing the Magician’s caps and Phrygian bonnets of tissue paper.
Toward one o’clock there was a general movement. The ladies of the house were inquired for, and the blue and white opera cloaks, reappeared descending the stairs, disturbing the couples who were seated there. The banging of carriage doors and the rumble of wheels recommenced in the street. The musicians played a little longer. As the party thinned out, there was greater dance room and a consequent greater pleasure in dancing, and these last dances at the end of the evening were enjoyed more than all the others. But ten minutes later the function was breaking up fast. Suddenly the musicians played “Home, Sweet Home.” Those still dancing uttered an exclamation of regret, but continued waltzing to this air the same as ever. Some even began to dance again in their overcoats and opera-wraps. Then at last the tired musicians stopped and reached for the cases of their instruments, and the remaining guests, seized with a sudden panic lest they should be the last to leave, fled to the dressing-rooms. These were in the greatest confusion, everyone was in a hurry. In the gentlemen’s dressing-room there was a great putting on of coats and mufflers and a searching for misplaced gloves, hats and canes. A bass hum of talk rose in the air, bits and ends of conversation being passed back and forth across the room. “You haven’t seen my hat have you, Jimmy?”
“Did you meet that girl I was telling you about?”
“Hello, old man; have a good time to-night?”
“Lost your hat?”
“No, I haven’t seen it.”
“Yes, about half-past ten.”
“Well, I told him that myself.”
“Ah, you bet, it’s the man that rustles that gets there. “Come around about four, then. “What’s the matter with coming home in our carriage?” At the doors of the dressing-rooms the ladies joined their escorts, and a great crowd formed in the hall, swarming down the stairs and out upon the front steps. As the first groups reached the open air there was a great cry, “Why, it’s pouring rain.” This was taken up and repeated, and carried all the way back into the house. There were exclamations of dismay and annoyance. “Why, it’s raining right down.”
“What shall we do?” Tempers were lost, brothers and sisters quarreling with each other over the question of umbrellas.
In a short time all the guests were gone, except the one young lady whose maid and carriage had somehow not been sent. The son of the hostess took this one home in a hired hack. The hostess and her daughter sat down to rest for a moment in the empty parlors. The canvass-covered floors were littered with leaves of smilax and la France roses, with bits of ribbon, ends of lace and discarded Phrygian bonnets of tissue paper. The butler and the second girl were already turning down the gas in the other rooms.
COSMOPOLITAN SAN FRANCISCO
AN ARTICLE REPRINTED FROM THE WAVE OF DEC. 24, 1897.
In a way San Francisco is not a city — or rather let us say, it is not one city. It is several cities. Make the circuit of these several cities and by the time you have come to the severalth you may say with some considerable degree of truth; “I have seen Peking and have walked the streets of Mexico, have looked on the life of Madrid, have rubbed elbows with Naples and Genoa, glanced in at Yokohama, even — though more remotely, perhaps — have known Paris and Berlin.
What is true of San Francisco is true of California. As yet we, out here, on the fringe of the continent, with the ocean before and the desert behind us, are not a people, we are peoples — agglomerate rather than conglomerate. All up and down the coast from Mexico to Oregon are scattered “little” Italys, “little” Spains, “little” Chinas, and even “little” Russias — settlements, colonies, tiny groups of nationalities flung off from the parent stock, but holding tightly to themselves, unwilling to mix and forever harking back to their native lands.
But it is a rather curious fact that, though the Anglo-Saxons are the great mining peoples, and though the confusion of nations in California is due almost solely to the rush for gold, it is, nevertheless, the Latin and not the German races that are in greater evidence among us. Ireland has stopped in New York and Boston and on the Atlantic seaboard, and it is hard to coax Germany across the Mississippi.
It is not hard to understand why Mexico should be here, and Spain is readily accounted for. But why the Chinaman? There are two almost iron-clad tendencies against his presence. First, the tendency in obedience to which nations move from East to West, and second, the bred-in-the-bone tendency of the Chinaman to stay where he is put, to live and labor and die within a ten mile radius of his birthplace. No nation in the world is more tenacious of the hearthstone than the Mongolian. Yet, of all the foreign colonies in California and San Francisco, none are larger or more distinct than the Chinese. A curious state of affairs when you think about it, and for which you can offer no explanation.
By way of parenthesis — and though they are only apparent by traces of former occupation — think for a moment how narrowly California escaped an influx of the Russians. Somewhere in the interior of Big White Land there must have been a tremendous crowding force along in the middle of the century, crowding the Russians up and up and up on to the shoulder of their country till they slid off and over into Alaska. They spread phenomenally and came steadily southward. There is even record of a clash between them and the early settlers. Sutter’s fort, so an old guardian of the place once told me, was built ostensibly against the Indians, but in reality to resist the encroachment of the Russians. The Russian himself has left indications of himself in a blockhouse or two or a fort or two, and even in the geographical names such as the Russian River. But no doubt the Alaskan purchase checked immigration from that quarter.
The aggregation of “little” Mexico, Italy and the like that makes a place for itself in San Francisco lies over on the other side of Chinatown and beyond the Barbary Coast. A good way to reach it is to follow the alleys of Chinatown, beginning at Waverley Place and going on through Spofford Alley and Gamblers’ Alley, till you come out near Luna’s restaurant. Strike out in any direction from Luna’s and in a sense you will travel a thous
and miles at every step. The best time to see “The Quarter,” as Anglo-Saxon San Francisco has come to call the place, is on a Saturday evening, between seven and eight o’clock, along in August or early September. “All the world” is on the streets at that time, and not a store has its shutters up. The very fruit stalls are open for business.
There is no suggestion of the Anglo-Saxon; neither in the speech of the sidewalk strollers, nor in the shop windows, nor in the wording of signs and advertisements; nor, fortunately in the general demeanor and behavior of the people. They are wine-drinkers essentially, and they know how to drink. There must be some — as yet unexplained — connection between malt drinks and truculence. Occasionally — at large intervals — an inhabitant of San Francisco’s Quarter knifes or pistols his fellow, but there is no fighting in the Quarter. The Latin is disputatious rather than quarrelsome, and when angry with his brother, with or without cause, prefers unostentatious murder to brutal thumpings, swung chairs and hurled bottles.
Then, too, our Mexicans, Italians and other people of the Quarter, take their pleasure in a different way. It is a grim and significant fact that when the German and the Irishman set about their amusement they go away from their homes. The Irishman, besides, goes away from his wife and children — one is speaking now of the mass of them. He forgathers with individuals of his own sex and disports himself in saloons and bars and the public parks, and his enjoyment is not complete unless he embroils himself in a fight. The German organizes interminable, more or less solemn, “basket picnics” on Sundays, locks up his house and goes “across the bay” for the day. You may see these families coming home by the score on any of the ferry boats late Sunday afternoon. The children’s hats are stuck full of oak leaves, and the lunch baskets are crammed with wilted wildflowers.
