One spring afternoon in 1889 a member brought into the Lambs Club
house--then on Twenty-sixth Street--as a guest Mr. Richard Harding
Davis. I had not clearly caught the careless introduction, and,
answering my question, Mr. Davis repeated the surname. He did not
pronounce it as would a Middle Westerner like myself, but more as a
citizen of London might. To spell his pronunciation Dyvis is to
burlesque it slightly, but that is as near as it can be given
phonetically. Several other words containing _a_ long a were sounded
by him in the same way, and to my ear the rest of his speech had a
related eccentricity. I am told that other men educated in certain
Philadelphia schools have a similar diction, but at that time many of
Mr. Davis's new acquaintances thought the manner was an affectation. I
mention the peculiarity, which after years convinced me was as native
to him as was the color of his eyes, because I am sure that it was a
barrier between him and some persons who met him only casually.
At that time he was a reporter on a Philadelphia newspaper, and in
appearance was what he continued to be until his death, an unassertive
but self-respecting, level-eyed, clean-toothed, and wholesome athlete.
The reporter developed rapidly into the more serious workman, and
amongst the graver business was that of war correspondent.
I have known fraternally several war correspondents--Dick Davis, Fred
Remington, John Fox, Caspar Whitney, and others--and it seems to me
that, while differing one from another as average men differ, they had
in common a kind of veteran superiority to trivial surprise, a tolerant
world wisdom that mere newspaper work in other departments does not
bring. At any rate, and however acquired, Dick Davis had the quality.
And with that seasoned calm he kept and cultivated the reporter sense.
He had insight--the faculty of going back of appearances. He saw the
potential salients in occurrences and easily separated them from the
commonplace--and the commonplace itself when it was informed by a
spirit that made it helpful did not mislead him by its plainness.
That is another war-correspondent quality. He saw when adherence to
duty approached the heroic. He knew the degree of pressure that gave
it test conditions and he had an unadulterated, plain, bread-and-water
appreciation of it.
I think that fact shows in his stories. He liked enthusiastically to
write of men doing men's work and doing it man fashion with
full-blooded optimism.
At his very best he was in heart and mind a boy grown tall. He had a
boy's undisciplined indifference to great personages not inconsistent
with his admiration of their medals. By temperament he was impulsive
and partisan, and if he was your friend you were right until you were
obviously very wrong. But he liked "good form," and had adopted the
Englishman's code of "things no fellow could do"--therefore his
impulsiveness was without offense and his partisanship was not
quarrelsome.
In the circumstance of this story of "Soldiers of Fortune" he could
himself have been either Clay or Stuart and he had the humor of
MacWilliams.
In the clash between Clay and Stuart, when Clay asks the younger man if
the poster smirching Stuart's relation to Madame Alvarez is true, it is
Davis talking through both men, and when, standing alone, Clay lifts
his hat and addresses the statue of General Bolivar, it is Davis at his
best.
Modern criticism has driven the soliloquy from the theatre, but modern
criticism in that respect is immature and wrong. The soliloquy exists.
Any one observing the number of business men who, talking aloud to
themselves, walk Fifth Avenue any evening may prove it. For Davis the
soliloquy was not courageous; it was simply true. And that was a place
for it.
When "Soldiers of Fortune" was printed it had a quick and a deserved
popularity. It was cheerily North American in its viewpoint of the
sub-tropical republics and was very up to date. The outdoor American
girl was not so established at that time, and the Davis report of her
was refreshing. Robert Clay was unconsciously Dick Davis himself as he
would have tried to do--Captain Stuart was the English officer that
Davis had met the world over, or, closer still, he was the better side
of such men which the attractive wholesomeness of Davis would draw out.
Alice and King were the half-spoiled New Yorkers as he knew them at the
dinner-parties.
At a manager's suggestion Dick made a play of the book. It was his
first attempt for the theatre and lacked somewhat the skill that he
developed later in his admirable "Dictator." I was called in by the
manager as an older carpenter and craftsman to make another dramatic
version. Dick and I were already friends and he already liked plays
that I had done, but that alone could not account for the heartiness
with which he turned over to me his material and eliminated himself.
Only his unspoiled simplicity and utter absence of envy could do that.
Only native modesty could explain the absence of the usual author pride
and sensitiveness. The play was immediately successful. It would have
been a dull hack, indeed, who could have spoiled such excellent stage
material as the novel furnished, but his generosity saw genius in the
dramatic extension of the types he had furnished and in the welding of
additions. Even after enthusiasm had had time enough to cool, he sent
me a first copy of the Playgoers' edition of the novel, printed in
1902, with the inscription: