Frank Norris Remembered

Part 2. College Years: Berkeley and Cambridge, 1890–95

2 College Years Berke­ ley and Cambridge, 1890–95 As formative of Norris’s character as his childhood, if not more so, were his college years at the University of California. There he embarked on a fairly traditionalfour -­yearcourseofstudyfollowedbyayearatHarvardCollege,withnei­ther experience resulting in a degree. Nevertheless, if the recollections of fraternity brothers, college classmates, and university professors can be trusted, he benefited both intellectually and socially from his time in cloistered academe. Steadfastly loyal, generously unselfish, dependably congenial, unfailingly polite, always fun loving, and mildly rebellious, he was the perfect fraternity buddy, as attested by the comments of eight fellow members of Phi Gamma Delta who remembered both his pranks and his friendship fondly. But Norris also ­ fig­ ured prominently in the memories of those he met outside his fraternity, such as Stanly A. Easton, who knew him through a college dramatic society, Louis Bartlett who in the student cadet corps commanded Company F, of which Norris was a recalcitrant member, Eleanor M. Davenport, a serious student interested in Norris ’s literary bent, Hull McClaughry, who, though a year ahead of Norris, cherished their acquaintance not only at Berke­ley but also at Harvard and even later, and Maurice V. Samuels, whose friendship with Norris in their freshman year he recalled three decades later as one of the boons of a lifetime. Nor did Norris neglect the other side of college life. Never a superior student and bedeviled by mathematics, he fared better in literature and history. Three of his professors left affectionate tributes to their former student, while a fourth, Gelett Burgess, just four years older than Norris, counted him as a lifelong friend. ...