Frank Norris Remembered

18. Jessica B. Peixotto

18 / Jessica B. Peixotto Although Jessica Blanche Peixotto (1864–1941) was several years older than Nor­ ris, she did not enter college until 1891, a year after him. As a young woman, she had followed her family’s suggestion that she not pursue further education beyond high school, but her acquaintance with Norris, friend of her brother Ernest, soon radically changed her thinking as well as her later career, when he convinced her to enroll as a student at Berke­ ley, where she managed with his encouragement to complete her studies in three years. After her graduation, she, like Norris and Ernest before her, traveled to Paris, where she studied at the Sorbonne before returning to the University of California to enroll as a graduate student in sociology , which in turn led to a PhD, the sec­ ond awarded to a woman by the university . Taking an overload as an undergraduate gave her less time than most of her peers had to participate in extracurricular activities, the lone exception being her accepting the role of Mrs. Faversham in Norris’s “Two Pair” opposite William Denman. Source: Jessica B. Peixotto. Interview notes by Franklin D. Walker, May 28, 1930, Franklin Dickerson Walker Papers, BANC MSS C-­ H 79, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berke­ ley. Miss Peixotto was a very good friend of Frank’s. She met him first in her home in San Francisco after his return from Paris about the time Ernest returned.68 They had been pals when abroad and remained so after returning. Frank was very much of a dilettante in those days and loved to appear as a man of the world. He was writing Yvernelle, painting, preparing for exams, etc. Older than the boys in the university and inclined to look upon them as children. He persuaded her to enter the year after he did and then fig­ ure it out so that she could graduate in 1894. He did not graduate because he could not do trigonometry. When he entered the university he was imitating Kipling in his writing.69 She seems to think that he contributed much to The Berke­leyan.70 In his senior year, or later, he became very enthusiastic about Zola. They took the realistic course in French Literature under Paget together; Paget was a classicist and had no use for 80 / Frank Norris Remembered the realists. He didn’t mention Zola. At that time people did not tolerate Zola. When she later went to school in France she mentioned him at the dinner table, only to be asked, “Do young girls read Zola in America?” Frank’s chief interests were economic and sex cross currents. He was at heart always something of a reformer. So with The Octopus his chief desire was to put the truth before the public. Ernest he called Little Billie after Du Maurier’s novel.71 When he met her he already had a few gray hairs. He would write in a bare attic room in their home in S.F. Scrupulously polite with the ladies; he met her on the campus while smoking his pipe and put it in his pocket. She smelled it burn. He liked independent women and admired her when she led a movement to shorten skirts to shoe tops to scandal of faculty. He persuaded her to take a part in the farce to the opposition of Bill Denman who did not approve of it. They were always good pals, nothing more. They took many English classes together. He was particularly fond of Chaucer and admired Bradley very much.72 He didn’t like Armes. Doesn’t remember about Gayley. Maida Castelhun, now Mrs. Darnton, can be reached through the University Woman’s Club, New York.73 Mrs. Sloss’s Victorian Poetry was inspired by Mrs. Norris and is dedicated to her. ...