








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,