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Java Head

Joseph Hergesheimer

31 ratings
Java Head | Joseph Hergesheimer

Java Head

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Java Head is a novel of the American merchant marine at the beginning of the great clipper ship era. It is laid in Salem, when that city was still a port rich with the traffic of the East Indies; a story of choleric ship masters, charming girls, and an aristocratic Manchu woman in carmine and jades and crusted gold. There is a drama as secret and poisonous as opium, lovely old gardens with lilac trees and green lattices, and elm-shaded streets ending at the harbor with the brigs unloading ivory from Africa and the ships crowding on their topsails for Canton. It is a romantic novel-and yet true-rather than a study of drab manners; there is no purpose in it other than the pleasure to be found in the spectacle of life supported by high courage and made beautiful by women in peacock shawls.
and lighted it with slightly trembling fingers. He grumbled inarticulately, remembering his own exploits in the carrying of sail and record runs under the bluff bows of the Honorable John Company itself. The ebb tide, he thought, returning to William's figure and its amplification by himself. So much that had been good sweeping out to sea never to return….Gerrit long overdue.

Once more he shook himself free of numbing dread; automatically he had fallen back into the passage from the secretary to the hall door. He saw that he had worn threadbare a narrow strip where his feet had so often pressed. It would be necessary for him to see about a fresh case of cheroots soon, primes, too; they needn't try to put him off with the second quality. He was put off a great deal lately; people pretended to be listening to him, and all the time their thoughts were somewhere else, either that or they were merely politely concealing the opinion that he was out of date, of no importance.

His family were always providing against his fatigue or excitement; at the countinghouse the gravest problems, he was certain, were withheld from him. At the occurrence of this possibility a fresh indignation poured through his brain. Fuming and tramping up and down he determined that to-morrow he would show any of the clerks who didn't attend to his wishes or counsel that he was still senior partner of Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone.

III

The evening was surprisingly warm and still, with an intermittent falling of rain, and the windows were open in the room where Rhoda Ammidon sat regarding half dismayed her reflection in the mirror of a dressing table. A few minutes before she had discovered her first gray hair. It was not only the mere assault upon her vanity, but, too, a realization far deeper—here was the stamp of time, the mark of a considerable progress toward the end itse

Joseph 02/05/2020
I came across this book after looking over the filmography of Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong, who starred in a 1934 film adaptation; it caught my eye due to the story -- an American sailor returns home to 1840s Salem, Mass., with a Chinese wife -- which naturally piqued my interest, given th
Beth 07/27/2018
Java Head homecoming.

This book was written at my Uncle's home in Milton, Ny.... The home named for the book... Java Head.
I had no high expectations of the book, even though I generally enjoy the work of Victorian era authors.
I loved this. It was exciting, down to earth, real, and mesmerizing. Exce
Stephen 02/10/2018
From the title, and from having read the author's Wild Oranges, I expected this to be a sea story. I read it because James Thurber commended it to his young daughter to read along with books by authors I like (Wharton, Tarkington) or revere (Cather). The book is set in Salem MA c. 1849 and is about

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