Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis Part 5

That was a fine tea you gave. I should like to have heard the good talk. It was like the regiment of brigadier generals with no privates.

Your

MOTHER.

This is a letter written by my father after the publication of Richard's story "A Walk up the Avenue." Richard frequently spoke of his father as his "kindest and severest critic."

PHILADELPHIA, July 22nd, 1890.

10.30 P. M.

MY DEAR Boy:

You can do it; you have done it; it is all right. I have read A Walk up the Avenue. It is far and away the best thing you have ever done--Full of fine subtle thought, of rare, manly feeling.

I am not afraid of d.i.c.k the author. He's all right. I shall only be afraid--when I am afraid--that d.i.c.k the man will not live up to the other fellow, that he may forget how much the good Lord has given him, and how responsible to the good Lord and to himself he is and will be for it. A man entrusted with such talent should carry himself straighter than others to whom it is denied. He has great duties to do; he owes tribute to the giver.

Don't let the world's temptations in any of its forms come between you and your work. Make your life worthy of your talent, and humbly by day and by night ask G.o.d to help you to do it.

I am very proud of this work. It is good work, with brain, bone, nerve, muscle in it. It is human, with healthy pulse and heartsome glow in it. Remember, hereafter, you have by it put on the bars against yourself preventing you doing any work less good. You have yourself made your record, you can't lower it. You can only beat it.

Lovingly, DAD.

In the latter part of December, 1890, Richard left The Evening Sun to become the managing editor of Harper's Weekly. George William Curtis was then its editor, and at this time no periodical had a broader or greater influence for the welfare of the country. As Richard was then but twenty-six, his appointment to his new editorial duties came as a distinct honor. The two years that Richard had spent on The Evening Sun had been probably the happiest he had ever known. He really loved New York, and at this time Paris and London held no such place in his affections as they did in later years. And indeed there was small reason why these should not have been happy years for any young man.

At twenty-six Richard had already accomplished much, and his name had become a familiar one not only to New Yorkers but throughout the country. Youth and health he had, and many friends, and a talent that promised to carry him far in the profession he loved. His new position paid him a salary considerably larger than he had received heretofore, and he now demanded and received much higher terms for his stories.

All of which was well for Richard because as his income grew so grew his tastes. I have known few men who cared less for money than did my brother, and I have known few who cared more for what it could buy for his friends and for himself. Money to him, and, during his life he made very large sums of it, he always chose to regard as income but never capital. A bond or a share of stock meant to him what it would bring that day on the Stock Exchange. The rainy day which is the bugaboo for the most of us, never seemed to show on his horizon. For a man whose livelihood depended on the lasting quality of his creative faculties he had an infinite faith in the future, and indeed his own experience seemed to show that he was justified in this belief. It could not have been very long after his start as a fiction writer that he received as high a price for his work as any of his contemporaries; and just previous to his death, more than twenty years later, he signed a contract to write six stories at a figure which, so far as I know, was the highest ever offered an American author. In any case, money or the lack of it certainly never caused Richard any worriment during the early days of which I write. For what he made he worked extremely hard, but the reputation and the spending of the money that this same hard work brought him caused him infinite happiness. He enjoyed the reputation he had won and the friends that such a reputation helped him to make; he enjoyed entertaining and being entertained, and he enjoyed pretty much all of the good things of life. And all of this he enjoyed with the naive, almost boyish enthusiasm that only one could to whom it had all been made possible at twenty-six. Of these happy days Booth Tarkington wrote at the time of my brother's death:

"To the college boy of the early nineties Richard Harding Davis was the 'beau ideal of jeunesse doree,' a sophisticated heart of gold. He was of that college boy's own age, but already an editor--already publis.h.i.+ng books! His stalwart good looks were as familiar to us as were those of our own football captain; we knew his face as we knew the face of the President of the United States, but we infinitely preferred Davis's. When the Waldorf was wondrously completed, and we cut an exam. in Cuneiform Inscriptions for an excursion to see the world at lunch in its new magnificence, and Richard Harding Davis came into the Palm Room--then, oh, then, our day was radiant! That was the top of our fortune; we could never have hoped for so much. Of all the great people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see."

Richard's intimate friends of these days were Charles Dana Gibson, who ill.u.s.trated a number of my brother's stories, Robert Howard Russell, Albert La Montagne, Helen Benedict, now Mrs. Thomas Hastings, Ethel Barrymore, Maude Adams, E. H. Sothern, his brother, Sam, and Arthur Brisbane. None of this little circle was married at the time, its various members were seldom apart, and they extracted an enormous amount of fun out of life. I had recently settled in New York, and we had rooms at 10 East Twenty-eighth Street, where we lived very comfortably for many years. Indeed Richard did not leave them until his marriage in the summer of 1899. They were very pleasant, sunny rooms, and in the sitting-room, which Richard had made quite attractive, we gave many teas and supper-parties. But of all the happy incidents I can recall at the Twenty-eighth Street house, the one I remember most distinctly took place in the hallway the night that Richard received the first statement and check for his first book of short stories, and before the money had begun to come in as fast as it did afterward. We were on our way to dinner at some modest resort when we saw and at once recognized the long envelope on the mantel. Richard guessed it would be for one hundred and ninety dollars, but with a rather doubting heart I raised my guess to three hundred. And when, with trembling fingers, Richard had finally torn open the envelope and found a check for nine hundred and odd dollars, what a wild dance we did about the hall-table, and what a dinner we had that night! Not at the modest restaurant as originally intended, but at Delmonico's! It was during these days that Seymour Hicks and his lovely wife Ellaline Terriss first visited America, and they and Richard formed a mutual attachment that lasted until his death.

Richard had always taken an intense interest in the drama, and at the time he was managing editor of Harper's Weekly had made his first efforts as a playwright. Robert Hilliard did a one-act version of Richard's short story, "Her First Appearance," which under the t.i.tle of "The Littlest Girl" he played in vaudeville for many years. E. H.

Sothern and Richard had many schemes for writing a play together, but the only actual result they ever attained was a one-act version Sothern did at the old Lyceum of my brother's story, "The Disreputable Mr.

Raegen." It was an extremely tense and absorbing drama, and Sothern was very fine in the part of Raegen, but for the forty-five minutes the playlet lasted Sothern had to hold the stage continuously alone, and as it preceded a play of the regulation length, the effort proved too much for the actor's strength, and after a few performances it was taken off. Although it was several years after this that my brother's first long play was produced he never lost interest in the craft of playwriting, and only waited for the time and means to really devote himself to it.

BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891.

DEAR FAMILY:--

This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that my head is still its normal size, although I have at last found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York.

The Fairchilds' dinner was a tremendous affair, and I was conquered absolutely by Mr. Howells, who went far, far out of his way to be as kind and charming as an old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet me. And everybody came, princ.i.p.ally owing to the "Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it made me pretty near weep. Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never goes any place, to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes. "I was on in that scene." In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to Mrs.

Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S----s but made a point not to as he was talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs. Fairchild and I agreed to be the only people in Boston who had not clasped his hand. There were only a few people present and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I thought very characteristic of the city. To-day I posed again and c.u.mnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the Clubs where I met some very nice boys and felt very old. Then we went to a tea Cus.h.i.+ng gave in his rooms and to night I go to Mrs. Deland's.

But the mornings with the Fairchilds are the best. d.i.c.k.

In the spring of 1891 my mother and sister, Nora, went abroad for the summer, and the following note was written to Richard just before my mother sailed:

DEAR d.i.c.k:

This is just to give my dearest love to you my darling. Some day at sea when I cannot hear you nor see you, whenever it is that you get it--night or morning---you may be sure that we are all loving and thinking of you.

Keep close to the Lord. Your Lord who never has refused to hear a prayer of yours.

Just think that I have kissed you a thousand times.

MOTHER.

FRANKLIN SQUARE, NEW YORK.

June, 1891.

DEAR MOTHER:

Your letters are a great delight to me but I think you are going entirely too quickly. You do not feel it now but you are simply hurrying through the courses of your long dinner so rapidly that when dessert comes you will not be up to it. A day or two's rest and less greed to see many things would be much more fun I should think, and you will enjoy those days more to look back to when you wandered around some little town by yourselves and made discoveries than those you spent doing what you feel you ought to do. Excuse this lecture but I know that when I got to Paris I wanted to do nothing but sit still and read and let "sights" go-- You will soon learn not to duplicate and that one cathedral will answer for a dozen. And I am disappointed in your mad desire to get to Edinboro to get letters from home, as though you couldn't get letters from me every day of your life and as if there were not enough of you together to keep from getting homesick. I am ashamed of you. But that is all the scolding I have to do for I do not know what has given me more pleasure than your letters and Nora's especially. They tell me the best news in the world and that is, that you are all getting as much happiness out of it as I have prayed you would. I may go over in September myself. But I would only go to London. Now, then for Home news. I have sold the "Reporter Who Made Himself King" to McClure's for $300. to be published in the syndicate in August. I have finished "Her First Appearance" and Gibson is doing the ill.u.s.trations, three. I got $175. for it.

I am now at work on a story about Arthur c.u.mnock, Harvard's football captain who was the hero of Cla.s.s Day. It will come out this week and will match Lieut. Grant's chance. In July I begin a story called the "Traveller's Tale" which will be used in the November Harper. That is all _I_ am doing.

So far the notices of "Gallegher" have been very good, I mean the English ones.

I went up to Cla.s.s Day on Friday and spent the day with Miss Fairchild and Miss Howells and with Mr. H. for chaperone. He is getting old and says he never deserved the fuss they made over him. We had a pretty perfect day although it threatened rain most of the time. We wandered around from one spread to another meeting beautifully dressed girls everywhere and "lions" and celebrities. Then the fight for the roses around the tree was very interesting and picturesque and arena like and the best of all was sitting in the broad window seats of the dormitories with a Girl or two, generally "a" girl and listening to the glee club sing and watching the lanterns and the crowds of people as beautiful as Redfern could make them.

Half of Seabright was burnt down last week but not my half, although the fire destroyed all the stores and fishermen's houses and stopped only one house away from Pannachi's, where I will put up. I am very well and content and look forward to much pleasure this summer at Seabright and much work. I find I have seldom been so happy as when working hard and fast as I have been forced to do these last two weeks and so I will keep it up. Not in such a way as to hurt me but just enough to keep me happy. d.i.c.k.

NEW YORK, August 1891. From The Pall Mall Budget Gazette.

"The Americans are saying, by the way, that they have discovered a Rudyard Kipling of their own. This is Mr. Richard Harding Davis, a volume of whose stories has been published this week by Mr. Osgood.

Mr. Davis is only twenty-six, was for sometime on the staff of the New York Evening Sun. He is now the editor of Harper's Weekly."

That is me. I have also a mother and sister who once went to London and what do you think they first went to see, in London, mind you.

They got into a four wheeler and they said "cabby drive as fast as you can," not knowing that four wheelers never go faster than a dead march--" to-- "where do you think? St. Paul's, the Temple, the Abbey, their lodgings, the Houses of Parliament--the Pavilion Music Hall--the Tower--no to none of these--"To the Post Office." That is what my mother and sister did! After this when they hint that they would like to go again and say "these m.u.f.fins are not English m.u.f.fins" and "do you remember the little Inn at Chester, ah, those were happy days," I will say, "And do you remember the Post Office in Edinburgh and London. We have none such in America." And as they only go abroad to get letters they will hereafter go to Rittenhouse Square and I will write letters to them from London. All this shows that a simple hurriedly written letter from Richard Harding Davis is of more value than all the show places of London. It makes me quite PROUD. And so does this:

"'Gallegher' is as good as anything of Bret Harte's, although it is in Mr. Davis's own vein, not in the borrowed vein of Bret Harte or anybody else. 'The Cynical Miss Catherwaight' is very good, too, and 'Mr.

Raegen' is still better."

But on the other hand, it makes me tired, and so does this:

"'The Other Woman' is a story which offends good taste in more than one way. It is a blunder to have written it, a greater blunder to have published it, and a greater blunder STILL to have republished it."

I suppose now that Dad has crossed with Prince George and Nora has seen the Emperor, that you will be proud too. But you will be prouder of your darling boy Charles, even though he does get wiped out at Seabright next week and you will be even prouder when he writes great stories for The Evening Sun.