Complete Works of Frank Norris Read online

  The Complete Works of

  FRANK NORRIS

  (1870-1902)

  Contents

  The Novels

  MORAN OF THE “LADY LETTY”

  MCTEAGUE

  BLIX

  A MAN’S WOMAN

  THE OCTOPUS

  THE PIT

  VANDOVER AND THE BRUTE

  The Shorter Fiction

  A DEAL IN WHEAT AND OTHER STORIES OF THE NEW AND OLD WEST

  A JOYOUS MIRACLE

  THE THIRD CIRCLE AND OTHER STORIES

  UNCOLLECTED SHORT STORIES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Poetry

  YVERNELLE

  The Non-Fiction

  THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE NOVELIST: AND OTHER LITERARY ESSAYS

  ARTICLES AND SKETCHES

  The Contextual Pieces

  LIST OF ARTICLES, ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

  The Biography

  FRANK NORRIS by Charles G. Norris

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2015

  Version 1

  The Complete Works of

  FRANK NORRIS

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  COPYRIGHT

  Complete Works of Frank Norris

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2015.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

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  The Novels

  Chicago, Illinois — Norris’ birthplace

  Early twentieth century photograph of Chicago

  An artist’s rendering of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871

  Frank Norris writing, c. 1900

  MORAN OF THE “LADY LETTY”

  A STORY OF ADVENTURE OFF THE CALIFORNIA COAST

  Moran of the Lady Letty, A Story of Adventure off the California Coast appeared in 1898, published by Doubleday and McClure. It was Frank Norris’ first published novel, beginning in January 1898 as a serial in The Wave, a weekly San Franciscan journal that Norris often wrote for. He later shortened and altered the novel for book publication. Today’s critics consider the violent, even lurid, adventure tale, apprentice work. Although not a popular success, the novel received several good reviews. Norris was clearly a young novelist of talent and one to watch, even while some regarded the novel as imitation Robert Louis Stevenson. Renowned American author, William Dean Howells, in the December 17, 1898 issue of Literature: an International Gazette of Criticism, wrote about Moran and the Lady Letty, and about The Money Captain, by Will Payne:

  I am obliged to own that I read the two books I mean with almost the same breathlessness; if anything I gasped rather more in the crucial moments of “Moran of the Lady Letty” than in those of “The Money Captain”; but I do not consider even my own gasps criticisms; for the gasps of other people I have no more regard than for their goose-flesh. Still, “Moran” is a clever little story, and if the reader does not mind granting, after the working hypothesis, that a young society man in San Francisco can be drugged, cast aboard a fishing-schooner, and articled with a belaying-pin for a voyage to the waters of Southern California, there to take sharks for their livers in the employ of the Chinese Six Companies, I cannot deny that he will find a good deal of reality in the society man himself, as well as in the pirate-souled skipper, and the several Chinese cooks who manage the crew. As for the incidents, they follow one another with a profusion and a rapidity which leave one little leisure for question of their probability, from the time the skipper and the hero board a derelict vessel which promptly blows up with the skipper and leaves the hero in charge of the gigantic sea-girl Moran. She is the daughter of the Norse captain of the derelict, she was born and brought up on the ocean, and she has always lived the life of a man. She promptly takes command of the schooner, and the hero becomes her mate and remains no more than her comrade till she turns upon him in the madness of a hand-to hand fight with Chinese pirates, and finds him more than her match in a sort of Siegfried scuffle. She then duly owns her love, but the vigilance of the author prevents her marriage with the hero when they return to civilization, and he again becomes a society man. The captain of the Chinese pirate is her prisoner on board the schooner, and while the hero is gone to tea on a neighbouring yacht he seizes the chance to make fight for the lump of ambergris which first caused her trouble with him and his crew. Moran has no longer the strength of former days; her love has sapped her courage; she has instinctively become dependent on a man for her defence, and she falls under the Chinaman’s knife.

  In simply stating the scheme of any romanticistic story one has an unkind air of mocking it; but I should sincerely deprecate this in the case of “Moran of the Lady Letty,” to which I am grateful for some rapid passages of time, to say no less. The story gains a certain effectiveness from being so boldly circumstanced in the light of common day, and in a time and place of our own. Whoever desires a thrill may find it in this fresh and courageous invention, which has some divinations of human nature, as differenced in man nature and woman nature, and some curious glimpses of conditions. You are aware, in these, of a San Francisco world, as in “The Money Captain” you are aware of a Chicago world, interestingly unlike other worlds on either shore of the Atlantic...

  The January 1899 issue of Munsey’s Magazine praised Norris’ “vitality,” a quality he would certainly carry over into his later, mature work:

  A story betrays many things about its author, little facts about his personality that he is quite unconscious of registering. One may catch glimpses of him over the hero’s shoulder, and make very good guesses at his manner of bearing himself from his manner of shaping his phrases.

  No man with a light, careful footstep could have written “Moran of the Lady Letty.” It goes at a sure, strong pace, straight at the object wanted, and one hears the sound stump of heels in every page. It is the pace of one whose feet push the ground away from them with their surplus vigor.

  It is to the sense of fresh vitality that this book of high adventure owes half its charm. It is a thing built of flesh and blood, bone and muscle. It has a mind of its own, and a temper. It goes to sea for adventures, and finds them, too, strange, picturesque events new to the world of fiction, part of them taken, no doubt, from the experiences of some weather beaten old sea captain, since man’s imagination does not furnish such odd yet plausible properties without the help of living facts...

  It is a sincere story as well as a quick, stirring one, written with a convincing belief in its people and even
ts, and not without a certain scorn of the probabilities. One reads it with a sense of salt on the lips — and, once, in the eyes. The author, Frank Norris, is a young Californian with a strong taste for adventure that has already taken him from South Africa to Cuba, and a strong fist for the wielding of a pen. He has made a good beginning in fiction.

  A feature film version of Moran of the Lady Letty, directed by George Melford and starring Rudolf Valentino and Dorothy Dalton, appeared in 1922.

  The 1922 Paramount film version of Norris’ novel, directed by George Melford and starring Rudolph Valentino and Dorothy Dalton

  CONTENTS

  I. SHANGHAIED

  II. A NAUTICAL EDUCATION.

  III. THE LADY LETTY

  IV. MORAN

  V. A GIRL CAPTAIN

  VI. A SEA MYSTERY

  VII. BEACH-COMBERS

  VIII. A RUN FOR LAND

  IX, THE CAPTURE OF HOANG

  X. A BATTLE

  XI. A CHANGE IN LEADERS

  XII. NEW CONDITIONS

  XIII. MORAN STERNERSEN

  XIV. THE OCEAN IS CALLING FOR YOU

  Rudolph Valentno and Dorothy Dalton in the 1922 Paramount film

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  A scene from the 1922 film adaptation

  DEDICATED TO

  CAPTAIN JOSEPH HODGSON

  UNITED STATES LIFE SAVING SERVICE

  I. SHANGHAIED

  This is to be a story of a battle, at least one murder, and several sudden deaths. For that reason it begins with a pink tea and among the mingled odors of many delicate perfumes and the hale, frank smell of Caroline Testout roses.

  There had been a great number of debutantes “coming out” that season in San Francisco by means of afternoon teas, pink, lavender, and otherwise. This particular tea was intended to celebrate the fact that Josie Herrick had arrived at that time of her life when she was to wear her hair high and her gowns long, and to have a “day” of her own quite distinct from that of her mother.

  Ross Wilbur presented himself at the Herrick house on Pacific Avenue much too early upon the afternoon of Miss Herrick’s tea. As he made, his way up the canvased stairs he was aware of a terrifying array of millinery and a disquieting staccato chatter of feminine voices in the parlors and reception-rooms on either side of the hallway. A single high hat in the room that had been set apart for the men’s use confirmed him in his suspicions.

  “Might have known it would be a hen party till six, anyhow,” he muttered, swinging out of his overcoat. “Bet I don’t know one girl in twenty down there now — all mamma’s friends at this hour, and papa’s maiden sisters, and Jo’s school-teachers and governesses and music-teachers, and I don’t know what all.”

  When he went down he found it precisely as he expected. He went up to Miss Herrick, where she stood receiving with her mother and two of the other girls, and allowed them to chaff him on his forlornness.

  “Maybe I seem at my ease,” said Ross Wilbur to them, “but really I am very much frightened. I’m going to run away as soon as it is decently possible, even before, unless you feed me.”

  “I believe you had luncheon not two hours ago,” said Miss Herrick. “Come along, though, and I’ll give you some chocolate, and perhaps, if you’re good, a stuffed olive. I got them just because I knew you liked them. I ought to stay here and receive, so I can’t look after you for long.”

  The two fought their way through the crowded rooms to the luncheon-table, and Miss Herrick got Wilbur his chocolate and his stuffed olives. They sat down and talked in a window recess for a moment, Wilbur toeing-in in absurd fashion as he tried to make a lap for his plate.

  “I thought,” said Miss Herrick, “that you were going on the Ridgeways’ yachting party this afternoon. Mrs. Ridgeway said she was counting on you. They are going out with the ‘Petrel.’”

  “She didn’t count above a hundred, though,” answered Wilbur. “I got your bid first, so I regretted the yachting party; and I guess I’d have regretted it anyhow,” and he grinned at her over his cup.

  “Nice man,” she said — adding on the instant, “I must go now, Ross.”

  “Wait till I eat the sugar out of my cup,” complained Wilbur. “Tell me,” he added, scraping vigorously at the bottom of the cup with the inadequate spoon; “tell me, you’re going to the hoe-down to-night?”

  “If you mean the Assembly, yes, I am.”

  “Will you give me the first and last?”

  “I’ll give you the first, and you can ask for the last then.”

  “Let’s put it down; I know you’ll forget it.” Wilbur drew a couple of cards from his case.

  “Programmes are not good form any more,” said Miss Herrick.

  “Forgetting a dance is worse.”

  He made out the cards, writing on the one he kept for himself, “First waltz — Jo.”

  “I must go back now,” said Miss Herrick, getting up.

  “In that case I shall run — I’m afraid of girls.”

  “It’s a pity about you.”

  “I am; one girl, I don’t say, but girl in the aggregate like this,” and he pointed his chin toward the thronged parlors. “It un-mans me.”

  “Good-by, then.”

  “Good-by, until to-night, about — ?”

  “About nine.”

  “About nine, then.”

  Ross Wilbur made his adieu to Mrs. Herrick and the girls who were receiving, and took himself away. As he came out of the house and stood for a moment on the steps, settling his hat gingerly upon his hair so as not to disturb the parting, he was not by any means an ill-looking chap. His good height was helped out by his long coat and his high silk hat, and there was plenty of jaw in the lower part of his face. Nor was his tailor altogether answerable for his shoulders. Three years before this time Ross Wilbur had pulled at No. 5 in his varsity boat in an Eastern college that was not accustomed to athletic discomfiture.

  “I wonder what I’m going to do with myself until supper time,” he muttered, as he came down the steps, feeling for the middle of his stick. He found no immediate answer to his question. But the afternoon was fine, and he set off to walk in the direction of the town, with a half-formed idea of looking in at his club.

  At his club he found a letter in his box from his particular chum, who had been spending the month shooting elk in Oregon.

  “Dear Old Man,” it said, “will be back on the afternoon you

  receive this. Will hit the town on the three o’clock boat. Get

  seats for the best show going — my treat — and arrange to assimilate

  nutriment at the Poodle Dog — also mine. I’ve got miles of talk in

  me that I’ve got to reel off before midnight. Yours.

  “JERRY.”

  “I’ve got a stand of horns for you, Ross, that are Glory Hallelujah.”

  “Well, I can’t go,” murmured Wilbur, as he remembered the Assembly that was to come off that night and his engaged dance with Jo Herrick. He decided that it would be best to meet Jerry as he came off the boat and tell him how matters stood. Then he resolved, since no one that he knew was in the club, and the instalment of the Paris weeklies had not arrived, that it would be amusing to go down to the water-front and loaf among the shipping until it was time for Jerry’s boat.

  Wilbur spent an hour along the wharves, watching the great grain ships consigned to “Cork for orders” slowly gorging themselves with whole harvests of wheat from the San Joaquin Valley; lumber vessels for Durban and South African ports settling lower and lower to the water’s level as forests of pine and redwood stratified themselves along their decks and in their holds; coal barges discharging from Nanaimo; busy little tugs coughing and nuzzling at the flanks of the
deep-sea tramps, while hay barges and Italian whitehalls came and went at every turn. A Stockton River boat went by, her stern wheel churning along behind, like a huge net-reel; a tiny maelstrom of activity centred about an Alaska Commercial Company’s steamboat that would clear for Dawson in the morning.

  No quarter of one of the most picturesque cities in the world had more interest for Wilbur than the water-front. In the mile or so of shipping that stretched from the docks where the China steamships landed, down past the ferry slips and on to Meiggs’s Wharf, every maritime nation in the world was represented. More than once Wilbur had talked to the loungers of the wharves, stevedores out of work, sailors between voyages, caulkers and ship chandlers’ men looking — not too earnestly — for jobs; so that on this occasion, when a little, undersized fellow in dirty brown sweater and clothes of Barbary coast cut asked him for a match to light his pipe, Wilbur offered a cigar and passed the time of day with him. Wilbur had not forgotten that he himself was dressed for an afternoon function. But the incongruity of the business was precisely what most amused him.

  After a time the fellow suggested drinks. Wilbur hesitated for a moment. It would be something to tell about, however, so, “All right, I’ll drink with you,” he said.

  The brown sweater led the way to a sailors’ boarding-house hard by. The rear of the place was built upon piles over the water. But in front, on the ground floor, was a barroom.

  “Rum an’ gum,” announced the brown sweater, as the two came in and took their places at the bar.

  “Rum an’ gum, Tuck; wattle you have, sir?”