This letter, brought to light a short while ago by Mr. Sangree, in a
magazine article, discloses an exchange of sentiments creditable to all
the correspondents concerned.
For a time the promising journalist was overmastered by an ambition
to be an editor, and he established a short-lived dramatic periodical
called _The Stage_. In 1889 he reported the Johnstown flood for a
Philadelphia paper, and then, the following summer, went abroad with
the All-Philadelphia cricket team. Upon his return to this country,
New York charmed him, and there, for the most part, he has lived ever
since. At first he was connected with _The Evening Sun_. During this
connection he wrote his delightful "Van Bibber" stories. But these
were not his first stories. His first stories were written while he was
editor of a paper at Lehigh College, in his student days. The stories
numbered about a dozen, and Mr. Davis collected them and paid ninety
dollars to have them published in book form. The book has scarcely ever
been heard of since. Later, while at Johns Hopkins University, he wrote
his first accepted story, "Richard Carr's Baby," a sort of foot-ball
tale, which was published in St. Nicholas. However, the "Van Bibber"
stories were his first work of any serious account; they were the first
work to bring him popularity.
After the "Van Bibber" sketches came his most sparkling gem,
"Gallegher," a newspaper story which was refused by three editors and
then published, with immediate success, in _Scribner's Magazine_.
Later appeared in quick succession "The Other Woman," "An Unfinished
Story," "My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegan," and the other short
stories which soon made their author's name familiar to the reading
public on both sides of the ocean.
In 1890 Davis became editor of _Harper's Weekly_. This position he
left a year or so later to travel across the continent, with "The
West Through a Car Window" as the result. Then he went to London, and
described the life there; and then he went to Egypt and wrote "The
Rulers of the Mediterranean." He was now fairly well started; and since
then his pen has never been idle.
Since Mr. Davis's advent as a serious writer of fiction he has been
subjected on one side to the most extravagant praise and on the other
to the most merciless censure. The critics on both sides have made
matters worse by dropping the subject at hand and bringing out for
public inspection vast quantities of personal anecdotes about the
unfortunate author, most of which stories are probably apocryphal.
In fact, at one time the newspaper comments were so vulgar that the
helpless victim said to a friend who visited him in New York: "If
I thought I was like the man the newspapers make me out to be, I
would not only cut my own acquaintance; I'd cut my own throat." But,
so far as the public ever found out, he took the slings and arrows
philosophically. He could afford to. One by one his new works have
prospered.
It was at the height of this hypercritical hostility that, in 1897,
Davis was suddenly missed. About the same time the stories in the
_London Times_ on the war between Turkey and Greece began to attract
universal attention. The _Times_, said one of the New York newspapers,
which had shown especial bitterness toward its former reporter, has
discovered a brilliant war correspondent. It seemed that people all
over the world were asking, Who is he? It was Mr. Davis, proving,
under the cloak of the _Times'_ traditional anonymity his right to be
respected as a descriptive writer of the first quality. He repeated
this success the next year in Cuba, during the Spanish war, when his
extraordinary skill in the description of picturesque incidents was
favored by the circumstance that the generals and admirals themselves
were sending home virtually all the news.
When, last year, Mr. Davis went to South Africa it was commonly
expected that he would take sides with the British. Never was public
expectation more emphatically at fault. In a moment he took the
measure of the British cause and the British tactics; both of these
things disgusted him. He put Mr. Kipling himself to shame by serving
"the God of Things as They Are"; and as a result he forfeited many
friendships which he had made in England. But he won the hearts of his
countrymen. His courageous honesty destroyed in this country the last
vestige of captious hostility.
To-day, at the age of thirty-eight, just at the entrance to full-blown
life, Mr. Davis is widely admired and honored. He has pleased the
light-hearted with his pretty romantic tales, and he has satisfied
the strong of heart with his many examples of an unerring sense of
the true comedy and the true pathos of life, and, moreover, of his
remarkable personal fearlessness. Perhaps the term which a friend
applied to him is most fitting--perhaps he may best be called a
"sublimated reporter"; for your sublimated reporter must be at once an
imperturbable philosopher and an artist holding the mirror up to nature.
* * * * *
The author's marriage to Miss Cecil Clark of Chicago, at Marion,
Massachusetts, on May 4, 1899, was an event remarkable for its jollity.
Last year Mrs. Davis accompanied her husband to South Africa. She is
said to be as skillful with the pencil as he is with the pen.
[Illustration: Photo by Hollinger, N. Y.