Richard Harding Davis

“ In his youth, and indeed throughout his life, Richard had the greatest affection for England and the English. No truer American ever lived, but he thought the United States and Great Britain were bound by ties that must endure always. He admired British habits, their cosmopolitanism and the very simplicity of their mode of living. He loved their country life, and the swirl of London never failed to thrill him. During the last half of his life Richard had perhaps as many intimate friends in London as in New York. ”

“ Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and dump rifles on the beach and scurry away to sea again but only heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a wharf, and wait. That is all we do and that is my life at Key West. I get up and half dress and take a plunge in the bay and then dress fully and have a greasy breakfast and then light a huge Key West cigar, price three cents and sit on the hotel porch with my feet on a rail— Nothing happens after that except getting one's boots polished as the two industries of this place are blacking boots and driving cabs. ”

“ The snow fell an inch deep on Wednesday and dried up again in an hour and the sun shone through it all. So on the whole it was a good trip and most interesting. But here we are now in a perfect pandemonium and the Czar has not yet come nor one-fifth even of the notables. It is a great city, immense and overpowering in its extent. The houses are ugly low storied and in hideous colors except the churches which are like mosques and painted every color. I confess I feel beaten to night by the noise and rush and roar and by so many strange figures and marvellous costumes. ”

“ I wait until retreat is sounded and the gun is fired at sunset and having commented unfavorably on the way the soldiers let the flag drop on the grass instead of catching it on the arms as a bluejacket does, I ride off to the bay for another bath— Then I take the launch to the Raleigh and dine with the officers and rejoice in the clean fresh paint and brass and decks and the lights and black places of a great ship of war, than which nothing is more splendid. We sit on the quarter-deck and smoke and play the guitar and I go home again, in time for bed. ”

“ I wish Cecil could see it too, but I know she would not care for a room which is as free to the public view as the porch at Marion. It has 48 mats and as a mat is 3 x 5 you can work it out. We eat, sleep and dress in this room and it is like trying to be at home on top of a Chickering Grand. But it is very beautiful and the moonlight is fine and saddening. No one of us has the least interest in the war or in what we may see or be kept from seeing. We have been "over trained" and not even a siege of London could hold our thoughts from home. ”

“ The Boers outplay them in intelligence every day. The whole army is officered by one class and that the dull one. It is like the House of Peers. You would not believe the mistakes they make, the awful way in which they sacrifice the lives of officers and men. And they let the Boers escape. I watched the Boers for four hours the other day escaping after the battle of Pieters and I asked, not because I wanted them captured but just as a military proposition "Why don't you send out your cavalry and light artillery and take those wagons?" The staff officer giggled and said "They might kill us." ”

“ The heat is something awful. It bakes you and will dry your pith helmet in ten minutes after you have soaked it in water. But the scenery is magnificent, sometimes we ride above the clouds and look down into valleys stretching fifty miles away and see the buzzards half a mile below us. Then we go through forests of manaca palms that spread out on a single stem sideways and form arches over our heads with the leaves hanging in front of us like portiers or we cross great plains of grass and cactus and rock. The best fun is the baths we take in the mountain streams. ”

“ Paine got on because Scovel of The World has done so much secret service work for the admiral, running in at night and taking soundings, and by day making photographs of the coast, also carrying messages to the insurgents.
It is a wonderful ship, like a village, and as big as the Paris. We drift around in the sun or the moonlight, and when we see a light, chase after it. There is a band on board that plays twice a day. It is like a luxurious yacht, with none of the ennui of a yacht. ”

“ Late that summer he resumed his work on The Press, but Richard was not at all satisfied with his journalistic progress, and for long his eyes had been turned toward New York. There he knew that there was not only a broader field for such talent as he might possess, but that the chance for adventure was much greater, and it was this hope and love of adventure that kept Richard moving on all of his life. ”

“ Morocco as it is is a very fine place spoiled by civilization. Not nice civilization but the dregs of it, the broken down noblemen of Spain and cashiered captains of England and the R—— L——'s of America. They hunt and play cricket and gamble and do nothing to maintain what is best in the place or to help what is worst. I love the Moors and the way they hate the Christian and the scorn and pride they show. They seem to carry all the mystery and dignity of Africa and of foreign conquests about them, and they are wonderfully well made and fine looking and self-respecting. ”

“ As I recall these days of my boyhood I find the recollections of our life at Point Pleasant much more distinct than those we spent in Philadelphia. For Richard these days were especially welcome. They meant a respite from the studies which were a constant menace to himself and his parents; and the freedom of the open country, the ocean, the many sports on land and on the river gave his body the constant exercise his constitution seemed to demand, and a broad field for an imagination which was even then very keen, certainly keen enough to make the rest of us his followers. ”

“ The country is very like Cuba but more luxuriant in every way. There are some trees with marble like trunks and great branches covered with oriole nests and a hundred orioles flying in and out of them or else plastered with orchids. If Billy Furness were to see in what abundance they grew he would be quite mad. It is a great pity he did not come with us. This little town is the terminus of the railroad and we have been here four days while Jeffs the American Colonel in the Hondurean Army is getting our outfit. It has been very pleasant and we are in no hurry which is a good thing for us. ”

“ War does not soothe my savage breast. I find I want Cecil, and Jaggers, and Macklin to write, and plays to rehearse. Without Cecil bored to death at Cape Town, I would not mind it at all. I know how to be comfortable and on my second day I beat all these men who have been here three months in getting my news on the wire. ”

“ I am the first American they ever met they assure me every hour and we get on very well notwithstanding.
You can imagine what it is like when Spaniards, Moors and English Soldiers are all crowded into one long street with donkeys and geese and priests and smugglers and men in polo clothes and soldiers in football suits and sailors from the man-of-war. Of course, the Rock is the best story of it all. It is a fair green smiling hill not a fortress at all. ”

“ Everybody in the rear of the car is filthy dirty but I had a wash at the Custom house and now I am almost clean and quite happy. The day is beautiful and the compartment is all my own— I am absolutely enchanted with the Tyrol— I have never seen such quaint picture book houses and mills with wheels like that in the Good for Nothing and crucifixes wonderfully carved and snow mountains and dark green forests— The sky is perfect and the air is filled with the sun and the train moves so smoothly that I can see little blue flowers, baby blue, Bavarian blue flowers, in the Spring grass. ”

“ I knew more about Texas than the Texans and when they told me I would find summer here I smiled knowingly— That is all the smiling I have done—-Did you ever see a stage set for a garden or wood scene by daylight or Coney Island in March—that is what the glorious, beautiful baking city of San Antonio is like. There is mud and mud and mud—in cans, in the gardens of the Mexicans and snow around the palms and palmettos— Does the sun shine anywhere? Are people ever warm— It is raw, ugly and muddy, the Mexicans are merely dirty and not picturesque. ”

“ There is in the makeup of the best type of college undergraduate a wonderful spirit of adventure, an unprejudiced view of life, an almost Quixotic feeling for romance, a disdain of sordid or materialistic motives, which together make the years spent at a great university the most golden of the average man's career. These characteristics Davis was fortunate enough to retain through all the years of his life. ”

“ The old tub rocked like a milk shake and I was never so ill in my life, we all lay packed together on the ribs of the boat and could not move and the waves splashed over us but we were too ill to care. The next day the sun beat in on us and roasted us like an open furnace. The boat was a pit of heat and outside the swell of the Pacific rose and fell and reflected the sun like copper. ”

“ God help us if we do—and that it would be criminal to spend seventeen blank days on the West coast when we could fill in the entire trip North on the East Coast at many ports. It is a rather complicated trip as one has to change frequently but it will be a great thing to have seen. Cecil has really seen nothing at Cape Town and on this trip she will be paid for all the boredom that has gone before. I have been over part of it and am sure. Durban alone is one of the most curious cities I ever saw. It is like the Midway at the Fair. I want her to have some fun out of this. ”

“ I was in terrible fear that I would be too late to see the relief of Ladysmith but I was well in time and saw a fight the first few hours I arrived. It is terribly big and overwhelming like eighty of Barnum circuses all going at once in eighty rings and very hard to understand the geography. The Tugela is like a snake and crosses itself every three feet so that you never know whether you have crossed it yourself or not. Every one is most kind and I am as comfortable as can be. Indeed I like my tent so much that I am going to take it to Marion. ”

“ When I remember how far away the Congo seemed from New York and London, it is impossible to believe we are less than a day from it. I am so very glad I came. The people who have lived here for years agree about it in no one fact, so, it is a go-as-you-please for any one so far as accurate information is concerned, and I am as likely to be right as any one else. It has been a pleasant trip and for us will not be over until some days, for at Matadi, which is up the river, we will probably live on the steamer as the shore does not sound attractive. ”

“ I AM HAVING A VERY GOOD TIME AND AM VERY WELL. The place is as beautiful as one expects and yet all the time startling one with its beauty.
DICK.
When the season at Oxford was over Richard returned to London and took a big sunny suite of rooms in the Albany. Here he settled down to learn all he could of London, its ways and its people. In New York he had already met a number of English men and women distinguished in various walks of life, and with these as a nucleus he soon extended his circle of friends until it became as large as it was varied. ”

“ With garb and ways of unique picturesqueness, rarer even in college communities a generation ago than at present, it was inevitable that he sometimes got himself laughed at as well as with. But what did it all matter, even then? To-day it adds a glow of color to what would be in any case a vivid, deeply valued memory.
"It is hard to foresee in youth what will come most sharply and permanently in the long run. After all these years it is good to find that Davis and what his companionship gave one hold their place with the strongest influences of Lehigh." ”

“ She could not well set about preparing herself because all of her life she had done that and, so, smiling and with a splendid bravery and patience she lived on, finding her happiness in bringing cheer and hope and happiness to all who came into the presence of her wonderful personality. The old home in Philadelphia was just the same as it had been through her long married life—that is with one great difference, but on account of this difference I knew that she was glad to spend her last days with Richard at Crossroads. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a matter of fact, unless I get into the interior for a month and see something new, I shall consider the trip a failure, except as a most amusing holiday for one, and that was not exactly what I wanted or all I wanted. After this I shall go to big cities only and stay there. Everybody travels and everybody sees as much as you do and says nothing of it, certainly does not presume to write a book about it. Anyway, it has been great fun, so I shall put it down to that and do some serious work to make up for it. I'd rather have written a good story about the Inauguration than about Cairo. ”

“ If we could have a fight or something that would excuse and make a climax for all this marching and reconnoitering and discomfort the story would have a suitable finale and a raison d'etre. However, I may get something out of it if only to abuse the Government for their stupidity in chasing a jack rabbit with a brass band or by praising the men for doing their duty when they know there is no duty to be done. This country is more like the ocean than anything else and drives one crazy with its monotony and desolation. ”

“ And Field, seeing he had made a point, waved his arms and cried, "I have never known a man who amounted to anything who had not a good wife to care for—except YOU—" he shouted, pointing at me, "and no woman will ever save YOU." At which the passengers, who fully appreciated how I had been worrying him, applauded loudly, and the Doctor in his delight at having scored on me forgot to give the captain his testimonial. ”

“ I had dinner with John Drew last night. I occasionally sleep and if Nora doesn't come on time I shall be a skeleton and have no money left. As a matter of fact I am fatter than ever and can eat all sorts of impossible things here that I could never eat at home. I lunch every day with the Eustises and we dine out almost every night. I consort entirely with the poorest of art students or the noblest of princesses and so far have kept out of mischief, but you can never tell for this is a wicked city they say, or it strikes me as most amusing at present only I cannot see what Harper and Bros. ”