ADVENTURES AND LETTERS
OF
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
EDITED BY
CHARLES BELMONT DAVIS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE EARLY DAYS
II. COLLEGE DAYS
III. FIRST NEWSPAPER EXPERIENCES
IV. NEW YORK
V. FIRST TRAVEL ARTICLES
VI. THE MEDITERRANEAN AND PARIS
VII. FIRST PLAYS
VIII. CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
IX. MOSCOW, BUDAPEST, LONDON
X. CAMPAIGNING IN CUBA, AND GREECE
XI. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
XII. THE BOER WAR
XIII. THE SPANISH AND ENGLISH CORONATIONS
XIV. THE JAPANESE-RUSSIAN WAR
XV. MOUNT KISCO
XVI. THE CONGO
XVII. A LONDON WINTER
XVIII. MILITARY MANOEUVRES
XIX. VERA CRUZ AND THE GREAT WAR
XX. THE LAST DAYS
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY DAYS
Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia on April
18, 1864, but, so far as memory serves me, his life and mine
began together several years later in the three-story brick
house on South Twenty-first Street, to which we had just
moved. For more than forty years this was our home in all
that the word implies, and I do not believe that there was
ever a moment when it was not the predominating influence in
Richard's life and in his work. As I learned in later years,
the house had come into the possession of my father and mother
after a period on their part of hard endeavor and unusual
sacrifice. It was their ambition to add to this home not only
the comforts and the beautiful inanimate things of life, but
to create an atmosphere which would prove a constant help to
those who lived under its roof--an inspiration to their
children that should endure so long as they lived. At the
time of my brother's death the fact was frequently commented
upon that, unlike most literary folk, he had never known what
it was to be poor and to suffer the pangs of hunger and
failure. That he never suffered from the lack of a home was
certainly as true as that in his work he knew but little of
failure, for the first stories he wrote for the magazines
brought him into a prominence and popularity that lasted until
the end. But if Richard gained his success early in life and
was blessed with a very lovely home to which he could always
return, he was not brought up in a manner which in any way could
be called lavish. Lavish he may have been in later years, but if
he was it was with the money for which those who knew him best
knew how very hard he had worked.
In a general way, I cannot remember that our life as boys
differed in any essential from that of other boys. My brother
went to the Episcopal Academy and his weekly report never
failed to fill the whole house with an impenetrable gloom and
ever-increasing fears as to the possibilities of his future.
At school and at college Richard was, to say the least, an
indifferent student. And what made this undeniable fact so
annoying, particularly to his teachers, was that morally he
stood so very high. To "crib," to lie, or in any way to cheat
or to do any unworthy act was, I believe, quite beyond his
understanding. Therefore, while his constant lack of interest
in his studies goaded his teachers to despair, when it came to
a question of stamping out wrongdoing on the part of the
student body he was invariably found aligned on the side of
the faculty. Not that Richard in any way resembled a prig or
was even, so far as I know, ever so considered by the most
reprehensible of his fellow students. He was altogether too
red-blooded for that, and I believe the students whom he
antagonized rather admired his chivalric point of honor even
if they failed to imitate it. As a schoolboy he was
aggressive, radical, outspoken, fearless, usually of the
opposition and, indeed, often the sole member of his own
party. Among the students at the several schools he attended
he had but few intimate friends; but of the various little
groups of which he happened to be a member his aggressiveness
and his imagination usually made him the leader. As far back
as I can remember, Richard was always starting something--usually
a new club or a violent reform movement. And in school or
college, as in all the other walks of life, the reformer must,
of necessity, lead a somewhat tempestuous, if happy,
existence. The following letter, written to his father when
Richard was a student at Swarthmore, and about fifteen, will
give an idea of his conception of the ethics in the case:
SWARTHMORE--1880.
DEAR PAPA:
I am quite on the Potomac. I with all the boys at our table
were called up, there is seven of us, before Prex. for
stealing sugar-bowls and things off the table. All the youths
said, "O President, I didn't do it." When it came my turn I
merely smiled gravely, and he passed on to the last. Then he
said, "The only boy that doesn't deny it is Davis. Davis, you
are excused. I wish to talk to the rest of them." That all
goes to show he can be a gentleman if he would only try. I am
a natural born philosopher so I thought this idea is too
idiotic for me to converse about so I recommend silence and I
also argued that to deny you must necessarily be accused and
to be accused of stealing would of course cause me to bid
Prex. good-by, so the only way was, taking these two
considerations with each other, to deny nothing but let the
good-natured old duffer see how silly it was by retaining a
placid silence and so crushing his base but thoughtless
behavior and machinations.
DICK.
In the early days at home--that is, when the sun shone--we
played cricket and baseball and football
in our very spacious back yard, and the programme of our
sports was always subject to Richard's change without notice.
When it rained we adjourned to the third-story front, where we
played melodrama of simple plot but many thrills, and it was
always Richard who wrote the plays, produced them, and played
the principal part. As I recall these dramas of my early
youth, the action was almost endless and, although the company
comprised two charming misses (at least I know that they
eventually grew into two very lovely women), there was no time
wasted over anything so sentimental or futile as love-scenes.
But whatever else the play contained in the way of great
scenes, there was always a mountain pass--the mountains being
composed of a chair and two tables--and Richard was forever
leading his little band over the pass while the band, wholly
indifferent as to whether the road led to honor, glory, or
total annihilation, meekly followed its leader. For some
reason, probably on account of my early admiration for Richard
and being only too willing to obey his command, I was
invariably cast for the villain in these early dramas, and the
end of the play always ended in a hand-to-hand conflict
between the hero and myself. As Richard, naturally, was the
hero and incidentally the stronger of the two, it can readily
be imagined that the fight always ended in my complete
undoing. Strangulation was the method usually employed to
finish me, and, whatever else Richard was at that tender age,
I can testify to his extraordinary ability as a choker.
But these early days in the city were not at all the happiest
days of that period in Richard's life. He took but little
interest even in the social or the athletic side of his school
life, and his failures in his studies
troubled him sorely, only I fear, however, because it troubled
his mother and father. The great day of the year to us was
the day our schools closed and we started for our summer
vacation. When Richard was less than a year old my mother and
father, who at the time was convalescing from a long illness,
had left Philadelphia on a search for a complete rest in the
country. Their travels, which it seems were undertaken in the
spirit of a voyage of discovery and adventure, finally led
them to the old Curtis House at Point Pleasant on the New
Jersey coast. But the Point Pleasant of that time had very
little in common with the present well-known summer resort.
In those days the place was reached after a long journey by
rail followed by a three hours' drive in a rickety stagecoach
over deep sandy roads, albeit the roads did lead through
silent, sweet-smelling pine forests. Point Pleasant itself
was then a collection of half a dozen big farms which
stretched from the Manasquan River to the ocean half a mile
distant. Nothing could have been more primitive or as I
remember it in ...
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