Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis Part 19

SANTIAGO.

Headquarters Cavalry Division, U. S. Army.

Headqrs. Wood's Rough Riders.

June 29th, 1898.

DEAR DAD:

I suppose you are back from Marion now and I have missed you. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I wanted to see you coming up the street this summer in your knickerbockers and with no fish, but still happy. Never mind, we shall do the theatres this Fall, and have good walks downtown.

I hope Mother will come up and visit me this September, at Marion and sit on Allen's and on the Clarks' porch and we can have Chas. too. I suppose he will have had his holiday but he can come up for a Sunday.

We expect to move up on Santiago the day after to-morrow, and it's about time, for the trail will not be pa.s.sable much longer. It rains every day at three o'clock for an hour and such rain you never guessed.

It is three inches high for an hour. Then we all go out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way. It is very rough living. I have to confess that I never knew how well off I was until I got to smoking Durham tobacco and I've only half a bag of that left. The enlisted men are smoking dried horse droppings, gra.s.s, roots and tea. Some of them can't sleep they are so nervous for the want of it, but to-day a lot came up and all will be well for them. I've had a steady ration of coffee, bacon and hard tack for a week and one mango, to night we had beans. Of course, what they ought to serve is rice and beans as fried bacon is impossible in this heat. Still, every one is well. This is the best crowd to be with--they are so well educated and so interesting. The regular army men are very dull and narrow and would bore one to death. We have Wood, Roosevelt, Lee, the British Attache, Whitney and a Doctor Church, a friend of mine from Princeton, who is quite the most cheerful soul and the funniest I ever met. He carried four men from the firing line the other day back half a mile to the hospital tent. He spends most of his time coming around headquarters in an unders.h.i.+rt of mine and a gold bracelet fighting tarantulas. I woke up the other morning with one seven inches long and as hairy as your head reposing on my pillow. My sciatica bothers me but has not prevented me seeing everything and I can dig rain gutters and cut wood with any of them. It is very funny to see Larned, the tennis champion, whose every movement at Newport was applauded by hundreds of young women, marching up and down in the wet gra.s.s. Whitney and I guy him.

To-day a sentry on post was reading "As You Like It" and whenever I go down the line half the men want to know who won the boat race-- To-day Wood sent me out with a detail on a pretense of scouting but really to give them a chance to see the country. They were all college boys, with Willie Tiffany as sergeant and we had a fine time and could see the Spanish sentries quite plainly without a gla.s.s. I hope you will not worry over this long separation. I don't know of any experience I have had which has done me so much good, and being with such a fine lot of fellows is a great pleasure. The scenery is very beautiful when it is not raining. I have a cot raised off the ground in the Colonel's tent and am very well off. If Chaffee or Lawton, who are the finest type of officers I ever saw, were in command, we would have been fighting every day and would probably have been in by this time. This weather shows that Havana must be put off after Porto Rico. They cannot campaign in this mud.

d.i.c.k.

SANTIAGO, July 1898.

DEAR FAMILY:

This is just to rea.s.sure you that I am all right. I and Marshall were the only correspondents with Roosevelt. We were caught in a clear case of ambush. Every precaution had been taken, but the natives knew the ground and our men did not. It was the hottest, nastiest fight I ever imagined. We never saw the enemy except glimpses. Our men fell all over the place, shouting to the others not to mind them, but to go on.

I got excited and took a carbine and charged the sugar house, which was what is called the key to the position. If the men had been regulars I would have sat in the rear as B---- did, but I knew every other one of them, had played football, and all that sort of thing, with them, so I thought as an American I ought to help. The officers were falling all over the shop, and after it was all over Roosevelt made me a long speech before some of the men, and offered me a captaincy in the regiment any time I wanted it. He told the a.s.sociated Press man that there was no officer in his regiment who had "been of more help or shown more courage" than your humble servant, so that's all right.

After this I keep quiet. I promise I keep quiet. Love to you all.

RICHARD.

From Cuba Richard sailed with our forces to Porto Rico, where his experiences in the Spanish-American war came to an end, and he returned to Marion. He spent the fall in New York, and early in 1899 went to London.

One of the most interesting, certainly the most widely talked of, "sporting events" for which Richard was responsible was the sending of an English district-messenger boy from London to Chicago. The idea was inspired by my brother's general admiration of the London messenger service and his particular belief in one William Thomas Jaggers, a fourteen-year-old lad whom Richard had frequently employed to carry notes and run errands. One day, during a casual luncheon conversation at the Savoy with his friend Somers Somerset, Richard said that he believed that if Jaggers were asked to carry a message to New York that he could not only do it but would express no surprise at the commission. This conversation resulted in the bet described in the following letters. The boy slipped quietly away from London, but a few days later the bet became public and the newspapers were filled with speculation as to whether Jaggers could beat the mails. The messenger carried three letters, one to my sister, one to Miss Cecil Clark of Chicago, whom Richard married a few months later, and one to myself.

As a matter of fact, Jaggers delivered his notes several hours before letters travelling by the same boat reached the same destinations. The newspapers not only printed long accounts of Jaggers's triumphal progress from New York to Chicago and back again, but used the success of his undertaking as a text for many editorials against the dilatory methods of our foreign-mail service. Jaggers left London on March 11, 1899, and was back again on the 29th, having travelled nearly eighty-four hundred miles in eighteen days. On his return he was received literally by a crowd of thousands, and his feat was given official recognition by a gold medal pinned on his youthful chest by the d.u.c.h.ess of Rutland. Also, later on, at a garden fete he was presented to the Queen, and incidentally, still later, returned to the United States as "b.u.t.tons" to my brother's household.

Bachelors' Club, Piccadilly, W.

March 15th, 1899.

DEAR CHAS.

I hope you are not annoyed about Jaggers. When he started no one knew of it but three people and I had no idea anyone else would, but the company sent it to The Mail without my name but describing me as "an American gentleman"-- Instantly the foreign correspondents went to them to find out who I was and to whom I was sending the letter-- I told the company it was none of their d.a.m.ned business--that I employed the boy by the week and that I could send him where-ever I chose. Then the boy's father got proud and wrote to The Mail about his age and so they got the boy's name. Mine, however, is still out of it, but in America they are sure to know as the people on the steamer are crazy about him and Kinsey the Purser knows he is sent by me. After he gets back from Chicago and Philadelphia, you can do with him as you like until the steamer sails. If the thing is taken up as it is here and the fat is in the fire, then you can do as you please-- I mean you can tell the papers about it or not-- Somerset holds one end of the bets and I the other. There are two bets: one that he will beat the mail to Chicago, Somerset agreeing to consider the letter you give him to Bruce, as equivalent to one coming from here. The other bet is that he will deliver and get receipts from you, Nora and Bruce, and return here by the 5th of April-- You and Bobby ought to be able to do well by him if it becomes, as I say, so far public that there is no possibility of further concealment-- You have my permission to do what you please-- He is coming into my employ as soon as he gets back and as soon as the company give him a medal.

Over here there is the greatest possible interest in the matter-- At the Clubs I go to, the waiters all wait on me in order to have the latest developments and when it was cabled over here that the Customs'

people intended stopping him, indignation raged at the Foreign office.

of love,

d.i.c.k.

89 Jermyn Street, S. W.

March--1899

DEAR NORA:

This is to be handed to you by my special messenger, who is to a.s.sure you that I am in the best of health and spirits-- Keep him for a few hours and then send him on to Chicago-- As he is doing this on a bet, do not give him any written instructions only verbal ones. I am very well and happy and send you all my love-- Jaggers has been running errands for me ever since I came here, and a most loyal servitor when I was ill-- On his return I want to keep him on as a b.u.t.tons. See that he gets plenty to eat-- If he comes back alive he will have broken the messenger boy service record by three thousand miles. Personally, it does not cost me anything to speak of. The dramatization of the Soldiers continues briskly, and Maude is sending Grundy back the Jackal, to have a second go at it. Maude insists on its being done--so I stand to win a lot.

RICHARD.

Beefsteak Club, 9, Green Street, Leicester Square, W. C. Tuesday.

March--1899.

DEAR MOTHER:--

The faithful Jaggers should have arrived to-day, or will do so this evening-- I am sure you will make the poor little chap comfortable-- I do regret having sent him on such a journey especially since the papers here made such an infernal row over it-- However, neither of us will lose by it in the end--

I dined with Lady Clarke last night and met Lord Castleton there and he invited me up to Dublin for the Punchtown Races-- I have a great mind to go and write a story on them-- Castleton is a great sport and very popular at home and in England and it would be a pleasant experience.

Kuhne Beveridge is doing a bust of me in khaki outfit for the Academy and also for a private exhibition of her own works, which includes the Prince of Wales, and the Little Queen of Holland.

Hays Hammond has invited me down to South Africa again, with a promise of making my fortune, but I am not going as it takes too long.

d.i.c.k.

CHAPTER XII

THE BOER WAR

On May 4, 1899, at Marion, Ma.s.sachusetts, Richard was married to Cecil Clark, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John M. Clark of Chicago. After the marriage Richard and his wife spent a few weeks in Marion and the remainder of the summer in London and Aix-les-Bains.

MARION, May 28th, 1899.

DEAR MOTHER:

You sent me such a good letter about the visit of the three selected chorus girls. But what was best, was about your wis.h.i.+ng to see me. Of course, you know that I feel that too. I would have it so that we all lived here, so that Dad could fish, and Nora and Cecil could discuss life, and you and I could just take walks and chat. But because that cannot be, we are no further away than we ever were and when the pain to see you comes, I don't let it hurt and I don't kill it either for it is the sweetest pain I can feel. If sons will go off and marry, or be war-correspondents, or managers, it does not mean that Home is any the less Home. You can't wipe out history by changing the name of a boulevard, as somebody said of the French, and if I were able to be in two places at once, I know in which two places I would be here with Cecil at Marion, and at Home in the Library with you and Dad and The Evening Telegraph, and Nora and Van Bibber. You will never know how much I love you all and you must never give up trying to comprehend it.

G.o.d bless you and keep you, and my love to you every minute and always.

d.i.c.k.

Late in January, 1900, Richard and his wife started on their first great adventure together to the Boer War. Arriving at Cape Town, Richard left his wife there and, acting as correspondent with the British forces for the New York Herald and London Mail, saw the relief of Ladysmith. After this he returned to Cape Town, with the intention of joining Lord Roberts in his advance on Pretoria. But on arriving at Cape Town he learned that Lord Roberts did not intend to move for three weeks, and so decided to say farewell to the British army and to return to London in a leisurely and sightseeing fas.h.i.+on along the east coast.

It was after they were well started on this return voyage that Richard conceived the idea of leaving the s.h.i.+p at Durban, going to Pretoria, and, as he expressed it, "watch the Boers fighting the same men I had just seen fighting them."