Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis. Richard Harding Davis

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. DICK.

      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 muffins are not English muffins" 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.

      RICHARD.

      The Players, 16 Gramercy Park.

      24th, 1891.

      DEAR FAMILY:

      I had a great day at the game and going there and coming back. I met a great many old football men and almost all of them spoke of the "Out of the Game" story. Cumnock, Camp, Poe, Terry and lots more whose names mean nothing to you, so ignorant are you, were there and we had long talks. I went to see Cleveland yesterday about a thing of which I have thought much and talked less and that was going into politics in this country. To say he discouraged me in so doing would be saying the rain is wet. He seemed to think breaking stones as a means of getting fame and fortune was quicker and more genteel. I also saw her and the BABY. She explained why she had not written you and also incidentally why she HAD written Childs. I do not know as what Cleveland said made much impression upon me—although I found out what I could expect from him—that is nothing here but apparently a place abroad if I wanted it. But he thought Congress was perfectly feasible but the greatest folly to go there.

      DICK.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

FIRST TRAVEL ARTICLES

       Table of Contents

      For Richard these first years in New York were filled to overflowing with many varied interests, quite enough to satisfy most young men of twenty-seven. He had come and seen and to a degree, so far as the limitation of his work would permit, had conquered New York, but Richard thoroughly realized that New York was not only a very small part of the world but of his own country, and that to write about his own people and his own country and other people and other lands he must start his travels at an early age, and go on travelling until the end. And for the twenty-five years that followed that was what Richard did. Even when he was not on his travels but working on a novel or a play at Marion or later on at Mount Kisco, so far as it was possible he kept in touch with events that were happening and the friends that he had made all over the globe. He subscribed to most of the English and French illustrated periodicals and to one London daily newspaper which every day he read with the same interest that he read half a dozen New York newspapers and the interest was always that of the trained editor at work. Richard was not only physically restless but his mind practically never relaxed. When others, tired after a hard day's work or play, would devote the evening to cards or billiards or chatter, Richard would write letters or pore over some strange foreign magazine, consult maps, make notes, or read the stories of his contemporaries. He practically read every American magazine from cover to cover—advertisements were a delight to him, and the finding of a new writer gave him as much pleasure as if he had been the fiction editor who had accepted the first story by the embryo genius. The official organs of our army and navy he found of particular interest. Not only did he thus follow the movements of his friends in these branches of the service but if he read of a case wherein he thought a sailor or a soldier had been done an injustice he would promptly take the matter up with the authorities at Washington, and the results he obtained were often not only extremely gratifying to the wronged party but caused Richard no end of pleasure.

      According to my brother's arrangement with the Harpers, he was to devote a certain number of months of every year to the editing of The Weekly, and the remainder to travel and the writing of his experiences for Harper's Monthly. He started on the first of these trips in January, 1892, and the result was a series of articles which afterward appeared under the title of "The West from a Car Window."

      January, 1892. (Some place in Texas)

      I left St. Louis last night, Wednesday, and went to bed and slept for twelve hours. To-day has been most trying and I shall be very glad to get on dry land again. The snow has ceased although the papers say this is the coldest snap they have had in San Antonio in ten years. It might have waited a month for me I think. It has been a most dreary trip from a car window point of view. Now that the snow has gone, there is mud and ice and pine trees and colored people, but no cowboys as yet. They talk nothing but Chili and war and they make such funny mistakes. We have a G. A. R. excursion on the train, consisting of one fat and prosperous G. A. R., the rest of the excursion having backed out on account of Garza who the salient warriors imagine as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. One old chap with white hair came on board at a desolate station and asked for "the boys in blue" and was very much disgusted when he found that "that grasshopper Garza" had scared them away—He had tramped five miles through the mud to greet a possible comrade and was much chagrined. The excursion shook hands with him and they took a drink together. The excursion tells СКАЧАТЬ