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, the action
was almost endless and, although the company comprised two charming
misses (at least I know that they eventually grew into two very lovely
women), there was no time wasted over anything so sentimental or futile
as love-scenes. But whatever else the play contained in the way of
great scenes, there was always a mountain pass--the mountains being
composed of a chair and two tables--and Richard was forever leading his
little band over the pass while the band, wholly indifferent as to
whether the road led to honor, glory, or total annihilation, meekly
followed its leader. For some reason, probably on account of my early
admiration for Richard and being only too willing to obey his command,
I was invariably cast for the villain in these early dramas, and the
end of the play always ended in a hand-to-hand conflict between the
hero and myself. As Richard, naturally, was the hero and incidentally
the stronger of the two, it can readily be imagined that the fight
always ended in my complete undoing. Strangulation was the method
usually employed to finish me, and, whatever else Richard was at that
tender age, I can testify to his extraordinary ability as a choker.
But these early days in the city were not at all the happiest days of
that period in Richard's life. He took but little interest even in the
social or the athletic side of his school life, and his failures in his
studies troubled him sorely, only I fear, however, because it troubled
his mother and father. The great day of the year to us was the day our
schools closed and we started for our summer vacation. When Richard
was less than a year old my mother and father, who at the time was
convalescing from a long illness, had left Philadelphia on a search for
a complete rest in the country. Their travels, which it seems were
undertaken in the spirit of a voyage of discovery and adventure,
finally led them to the old Curtis House at Point Pleasant on the New
Jersey coast. But the Point Pleasant of that time had very little in
common with the present well-known summer resort. In those days the
place was reached after a long journey by rail followed by a three
hours' drive in a rickety stagecoach over deep sandy roads, albeit the
roads did lead through silent, sweet-smelling pine forests. Point
Pleasant itself was then a collection of half a dozen big farms which
stretched from the Manasquan River to the ocean half a mile distant.
Nothing could have been more primitive or as I remember it in its
pastoral loveliness much more beautiful. Just beyond our cottage the
river ran its silent, lazy course to the sea. With the exception of
several farmhouses, its banks were then unsullied by human habitation
of any sort, and on either side beyond the low green banks lay fields
of wheat and corn, and dense groves of pine and oak and chestnut trees.
Between us and the ocean were more waving fields of corn, broken by
little clumps of trees, and beyond these damp Nile-green pasture
meadows, and then salty marshes that led to the glistening, white
sand-dunes, and the great silver semi-circle of foaming breakers, and
the broad, blue sea. On all the land that lay between us and the
ocean, where the town of Point Pleasant now stands, I think there were
but four farmhouses, and these in no way interfered with the landscape
or the life of the primitive world in which we played.
Whatever the mental stimulus my brother derived from his home in
Philadelphia, the foundation of the physical strength that stood him in
such good stead in the campaigns of his later years he derived from
those early days at Point Pleasant. The cottage we lived in was an old
two-story frame building, to which my father had added two small
sleeping-rooms. Outside there was a vine-covered porch and within a
great stone fireplace flanked by cupboards, from which during those
happy days I know Richard and I, openly and covertly, must have
extracted tons of hardtack and cake. The little house was called
"Vagabond's Rest," and a haven of rest and peace and content it
certainly proved for many years to the Davis family. From here it was
that my father started forth in the early mornings on his all-day
fishing excursions, while my mother sat on the sunlit porch and wrote
novels and mended the badly rent garments of her very active sons.
After a seven-o'clock breakfast at the Curtis House our energies never
ceased until night closed in on us and from sheer exhaustion we dropped
unconscious into our patch-quilted cots. All day long we swam or
rowed, or sailed, or played ball, or camped out, or ate enormous
meals--anything so long as our activities were ceaseless and our
breathing apparatus given no rest. About a mile up the river there was
an island--it's a very small, prettily wooded, sandy-beached little
place, but it seemed big enough in those days. Robert Louis Stevenson
made it famous by rechristening it Treasure Island, and writing the new
name and his own on a bulkhead that had been built to shore up one of
its fast disappearing sandy banks. But that is very modern history and
to us it has always been "The Island." In our day, long before
Stevenson had ever heard of the Manasquan, Richard and I had discovered
this tight little piece of land, found great treasures there, and, hand
in hand, had slept in a six-by-six tent while the lions and tigers
growled at us from the surrounding forests.
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.
In an extremely sympathetic appreciation which Irvin S. Cobb wrote
about my brother at the time of his death, he says that he doubts if
there is such a thing as a born author. Personally it so happened that
I never grew up with any one, except my brother, who ever became an
author, certainly an author of fiction, and so I cannot speak on the
subject with authority. But in the case of Richard, if he was not born
an author, certainly no other career was ever considered. So far as I
know he never even wanted to go to sea or to be a bareback rider in a
circus. A boy, if he loves his father, usually wants to follow in his
professional footsteps, and in the case of Richard, he had the double
inspiration of following both in the footsteps of his father and in
those of his mother. For years before Richard's birth his father had
been a newspaper editor and a well-known writer of stories and his
mother a novelist and short-story writer of great distinction. Of
those times at Point Pleasant I fear I can remember but a few of our
elders. There were George Lambdin, Margaret Ruff, and Milne Ramsay,
all painters of some note; a strange couple, Colonel Olcott and the
afterward famous Madam Blavatsky, trying to start a Buddhist cult in
this country; Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, with her foot on the first
rung of the ladder of fame, who at the time loved much millinery
finery. One day my father took her out sailing and, much to the lady's
discomfiture and greatly to Richard's and my delight, upset the famous
authoress. At a later period the Joseph Jeffersons used to visit us;
Horace Howard Furness, one of my father's oldest friends, built a
summer home very near us on the river, and Mrs. John Drew and her
daughter Georgie Barrymore spent their summers in a near-by hostelry.
I can remember Mrs. Barrymore at that time very well---wonderfully
handsome and a marvellously cheery manner. Richard and I both loved
her greatly, even though it were in secret. Her daughter Ethel I
remember best as she appeared on the beach, a sweet, long-legged child
in a scarlet bathing-suit running toward the breakers and then dashing
madly back to her mother's open arms. A pretty figure of a child, but
much too young for Richard to notice at that time. In after-years the
child in the scarlet bathing-suit and he became great pals. Indeed,
during the latter half of his life, through the good days and the bad,
there were very few friends who held so close a place in his sympathy
and his affections as Ethel Barrymore.
Until the summer of 1880 my brother continued on at the Episcopal
Academy. For some reason I was sent to a different school, but outside
of our supposed hours of learning we were never apart. With less than
two years' difference in our ages our interests were much the same, and
I fear our interests of those days were largely limited to out-of-door
sports and the theatre. We must have been very young indeed when my
father first led us by the hand to see our first play. On Saturday
afternoons Richard and I, unattended but not wholly unalarmed, would
set forth from our home on this thrilling weekly adventure. Having
joined our father at his office, he would invariably take us to a
chop-house situated at the end of a blind alley which lay concealed
somewhere in the neighborhood of Walnut and Third Streets, and where we
ate a most wonderful luncheon of English chops and apple pie. As the
luncheon drew to its close I remember how Richard and I used to fret
and fume while my father in a most leisurely manner used to finish off
his mug of musty ale. But at last the three of us, hand in hand, my
father between us, were walking briskly toward our happy destination.
At that time there were only a few first-class theatres in
Philadelphia--the Arch Street Theatre, owned by Mrs. John Drew; the
Chestnut Street, and the Walnut Street--all of which had stock
companies, but which on the occasion of a visiting star acted as the
supporting company. These were the days of Booth, Jefferson, Adelaide
Neilson, Charles Fletcher, Lotta, John McCullough, John Sleeper Clark,
and the elder Sothern. And how Richard and I worshipped them all--not
only these but every small-bit actor in every stock company in town.
Indeed, so many favorites of the stage did my brother and I admire that
ordinary frames would not begin to hold them all, and to overcome this
defect we had our bedroom entirely redecorated. The new scheme called
for a gray wallpaper supported by a maroon dado. At the top of the
latter ran two parallel black picture mouldings between which we could
easily insert cabinet photographs of the actors and actresses which for
the moment we thought most worthy of a place in our collection. As the
room was fairly large and as the mouldings ran entirely around it, we
had plenty of space for even our very elastic love for the heroes and
heroines of the footlights.
Edwin Forrest ended his stage career just before our time, but I know
that Richard at least saw him and heard that wonderful voice of
thunder. It seems that one day, while my mother and Richard were
returning home, they got on a street-car which already held the great
tragedian. At the moment Forrest was suffering severely from gout and
had his bad leg stretched well out before him. My brother, being very
young at the time and never very much of a respecter of persons,
promptly fell over the great man's gouty foot. Whereat (according to
my mother, who was always a most truthful narrator) Forrest broke forth
in a volcano of oaths and for blocks continued to hurl thunderous
broadsides at Richard, which my mother insisted included the curse of
Rome and every other famous tirade in the tragedian's repertory which
in any way fitted the occasion. Nearly forty years later my father
became the president of the Edwin Forrest Home, the greatest charity
ever founded by an actor for actors, and I am sure by his efforts of
years on behalf of the institution did much to atone for Richard's
early unhappy meeting with the greatest of all the famous
leather-lunged tragedians.
From his youth my father had always been a close student of the classic
and modern drama, and throughout his life numbered among his friends
many of the celebrated actors and actresses of his time. In those
early days Booth used to come to rather formal luncheons, and at all
such functions Richard and I ate our luncheon in the pantry, and when
the great meal was nearly over in the dining-room we were allowed to
come in in time for the ice-cream and to sit, figuratively, at the feet
of the honored guest and generally, literally, on his or her knees.
Young as I was in those days I can readily recall one of those
lunch-parties when the contrast between Booth and Dion Boucicault
struck my youthful mind most forcibly. Booth, with his deep-set, big
black eyes, shaggy hair, and lank figure, his wonderfully modulated
voice, rolled out his theories of acting, while the bald-headed, rotund
Boucicault, his twinkling eyes snapping like a fox-terrier's,
interrupted the sonorous speeches of the tragedian with crisp, witty
criticisms or "asides" that made the rest of the company laugh and even
brought a smile to the heavy, tragic features of Booth himself. But
there was nothing formal about our relations with John Sleeper Clark
and the Jefferson family. They were real "home folks" and often
occupied our spare room, and when they were with us Richard and I were
allowed to come to all the meals, and, even if unsolicited, freely
express our views on the modern drama.
In later years to our Philadelphia home came Henry Irving and his
fellow player Ellen Terry and Augustin Daly and that wonderful quartet,
Ada Rehan, Mrs. Gilbert, James Lewis, and our own John Drew. Sir Henry
I always recall by the first picture I had of him in our dining-room,
sitting far away from the table, his long legs stretched before him,
peering curiously at Richard and myself over black-rimmed glasses and
then, with equal interest, turning back to the ash of a long cigar and
talking drama with the famous jerky, nasal voice but always with a
marvellous poise and convincing authority. He took a great liking to
Richard in those days, sent him a church-warden's pipe that he had used
as Corporal Brewster, and made much of him later when my brother was in
London. Miss Terry was a much less formal and forbidding guest,
rushing into the house like a whirlwind and filling the place with the
sunshine and happiness that seemed to fairly exude from her beautiful
magnetic presence. Augustin Daly usually came with at least three of
the stars of his company which I have already mentioned, but even the
beautiful Rehan and the nice old Mrs. Gilbert seemed thoroughly awed in
the presence of "the Guv'nor." He was a most crusty, dictatorial
party, as I remember him with his searching eyes and raven locks,
always dressed in black and always failing to find virtue in any actor
or actress not a member of his own company. I remember one
particularly acrid discussion between him and my father in regard to
Julia Marlowe, who was then making her first bow to the public. Daly
contended that in a few years the lady would be absolutely unheard of
and backed his opinion by betting a dinner for those present with my
father that his judgment would prove correct. However, he was very
kind to Richard and myself and frequently allowed us to play about
behind the scenes, which was a privilege I imagine he granted to very
few of his friends' children. One night, long after this, when Richard
was a reporter in New York, he and Miss Rehan were burlesquing a scene
from a play on which the last curtain had just fallen. It was on the
stage of Daly's theatre at Thirtieth Street and Broadway, and from his
velvet box at the prompt-entrance Daly stood gloomily watching their
fooling. When they had finished the mock scene Richard went over to
Daly and said, "How bad do you think I am as an actor, Mr. Daly?" and
greatly to my brother's delight the greatest manager of them all of
those days grumbled back at him: "You're so bad, Richard, that I'll
give you a hundred dollars a week, and you can sign the contract
whenever you're ready." Although that was much more than my brother
was making in his chosen profession at the time, and in spite of the
intense interest he had in the theatre, he never considered the offer
seriously. As a matter of fact, Richard had many natural
qualifications that fitted him for the stage, and in after-years, when
he was rehearsing one of his own plays, he could and frequently would
go up on the stage and read almost any part better than the actor
employed to do it. Of course, he lacked the ease of gesture and the
art of timing which can only be attained after sound experience, but
his reading of lines and his knowledge of characterization was quite
unusual. In proof of this I know of at least two managers who, when
Richard wanted to sell them plays, refused to have him read them the
manuscript on the ground that his reading gave the dialogue a value it
did not really possess.
In the spring of 1880 Richard left the Episcopal Academy, and the
following September went to Swarthmore College, situated just outside
of Philadelphia. I fear, however, the change was anything but a
success. The life of the big coeducational school did not appeal to
him at all and, in spite of two or three friendships he made among the
girls and boys, he depended for amusement almost wholly on his own
resources. In the afternoons and on holidays he took long walks over
the country roads and in search of adventure visited many farmhouses.
His excuse for these calls was that he was looking for old furniture
and china, and he frequently remained long enough to make sketches of
such objects as he pretended had struck his artistic fancy. Of these
adventures he wrote at great length to his mother and father, and the
letters were usually profusely decorated with illustrations of the most
striking incidents of the various escapades. Several of these
Swarthmore experiences he used afterward in short stories, and both the
letters and sketches he sent to his parents at the time he regarded in
the light of preparation for his future work. In his studies he was
perhaps less successful than he had been at the Episcopal Academy, and
although he played football and took part in the track sports he was
really but little interested in either. There were half-holidays on
Wednesdays and Saturdays, and when my brother did not come to town I
went to Swarthmore and we spent the afternoons in first cooking our
lunch in a hospitable woods and then playing some games in the open
that Richard had devised. But as I recall these outings they were not
very joyous occasions, as Richard was extremely unhappy over his
failures at school and greatly depressed about the prospects for the
future.
He finished the college year at Swarthmore, but so unhappy had he been
there that there was no thought in his mind or in that of his parents
of his returning. At that time my uncle, H. Wilson Harding, was a
professor at Lehigh University, and it was arranged that Richard should
go to Bethlehem the following fall, live with his uncle, and continue
his studies at Ulrich's Preparatory School, which made a specialty of
preparing boys for Lehigh. My uncle lived in a charming old house on
Market Street in Bethlehem, quite near the Moravian settlement and
across the river from the university and the iron mills. He was a
bachelor, but of a most gregarious and hospitable disposition, and
Richard therefore found himself largely his own master, in a big, roomy
house which was almost constantly filled with the most charming and
cultivated people. There my uncle and Richard, practically of about
the same age so far as their viewpoint of life was concerned, kept open
house, and if it had not been for the occasional qualms his innate
hatred of mathematics caused him, I think my brother would have been
completely happy. Even studies no longer worried him particularly and
he at once started in to make friendships, many of which lasted
throughout his life. As is usual with young men of seventeen, most of
these men and women friends were several times Richard's age, but at
the period Richard was a particularly precocious and amusing youth and
a difference of a few decades made but little difference--certainly not
to Richard. Finley Peter Dunne once wrote of my brother that he
"probably knew more waiters, generals, actors, and princes than any man
who lived," and I think it was during the first year of his life at
Bethlehem that he began the foundation for the remarkable collection of
friends, both as to numbers and variety, of which he died possessed.
Although a "prep," he made many friends among the undergraduates of
Lehigh. He made friends with the friends of his uncle and many friends
in both of the Bethlehems of which his uncle had probably never heard.
Even at that early age he counted among his intimates William W.
Thurston, who was president of the Bethlehem Iron Company, and J. Davis
Brodhead, one of Pennsylvania's most conspicuous Democratic congressmen
and attorneys. Those who knew him at that time can easily understand
why Richard attracted men and women so much older than himself. He was
brimming over with physical health and animal spirits and took the
keenest interest in every one he met and in everything that was going
on about him. And in the broadest sense he saw to it then, as he did
throughout his life, that he always did his share.
During those early days at Bethlehem his letters to his family were
full of his social activities, with occasional references to his work
at school. He was always going to dinners or dances, entertaining
members of visiting theatrical companies; and on Friday night my mother
usually received a telegram, saying that he would arrive the next day
with a party of friends whom he had inadvertently asked to lunch and a
matinee. It was after one of these weekly visits that my mother wrote
Richard the following:
Monday Night. MY DARLING Boy:
You went off in such a hurry that it took my breath at the last. You
say coming down helps you. It certainly does me. It brings a real
sunshine to Papa and me. He was saying that to-day. I gave Nolly a
sort of holiday after her miseries last night. We went down street and
got Papa a present for our wedding day, a picture, after all, and then
I took Miss Baker some tickets for a concert. I saw her father who
said he "must speak about my noble looking boy." I always thought him
a genius but now I think him a man of penetration as well. Then Nolly
and I went over to see the Russians. But they are closely boxed up and
not allowed to-day to see visitors. So we came home cross and hungry.
All evening I have been writing business letters.
Papa has gone to a reception and Charley is hard at work at his desk.
I answered Mr. Allen's letter this morning, dear, and told him you
would talk to him. When you do, dear, talk freely to him as to me.
You will not perhaps agree with all he says. But your own thoughts
will be healthier for bringing them--as I might say, out of doors. You
saw how it was by coming down here. Love of Christ is not a melancholy
nor a morbid thing, dear love, but ought to make one more social and
cheerful and alive.
I wish you could come home oftener. Try and get ahead with lessons so
that you can come oftener. And when you feel as if prayer was a
burden, stop praying and go out and try to put your Christianity into
real action by doing some kindness--even speaking in a friendly way to
somebody. Bring yourself into contact with new people--not John, Hugh,
Uncle and Grandma, and try to act to them as Christ would have you act,
and my word for it, you will go home with a new light on your own
relations to Him and a new meaning for your prayers. You remember the
prayer "give me a great thought to refresh me." I think you will find
some great thoughts in human beings--they will help you to understand
yourself and God, when you try to help them God makes you happy my
darling.
MAMA.
It was in this year that Richard enjoyed the thrill of seeing in print
his first contribution to a periodical. The date of this important
event, important, at least, to my brother, was February 1, the
fortunate publication was Judge, and the effusion was entitled "The Hat
and Its Inmate." Its purport was an overheard conversation between two
young ladies at a matinee and the editors thought so well of it that
for the privilege of printing the article they gave Richard a year's
subscription to Judge. His scrap-book of that time shows that in 1884
Life published a short burlesque on George W. Cable's novel, "Dr.
Sevier," and in the same year The Evening Post paid him $1.05 for an
article about "The New Year at Lehigh." It was also in the spring of
1884 that Richard published his first book, "The Adventures of My
Freshman," a neat little paper-covered volume including half a dozen of
the short stories that had already appeared in The Lehigh Burr. In
writing in a copy of this book in later years, Richard said: "This is
a copy of the first book of mine published. My family paid to have it
printed and finding no one else was buying it, bought up the entire
edition. Finding the first edition had gone so quickly, I urged them
to finance a second one, and when they were unenthusiastic I was hurt.
Several years later when I found the entire edition in our attic, I
understood their reluctance. The reason the book did not sell is, I
think, because some one must have read it."
In the summer of 1882 Richard went to Boston, and in the following
letter unhesitatingly expressed his opinion of that city and its people.
BOSTON, Wednesday.
July 1882.
DEAR FAMILY:--
I left Newport last night or rather this morning. I stopped at Beverly
and called on Dr. Holmes. He talked a great deal about mama and about
a great many other things equally lovely in a very easy, charming way.
All I had to do was to listen and I was only too willing to do that.
We got along splendidly. He asked me to stay to dinner but I refused
with thanks, as I had only come to pay my respects and put off to Dr.
Bartol's. Dr. Holmes accompanied me to the depot and saw me safely
off. Of all the lovely men I ever saw Dr. Bartol is the one. He lives
in a great, many roomed with as many gables, house. Elizabethan, of
course, with immense fireplaces, brass and dark woods, etchings and
engravings, with the sea and rocks immediately under the window and the
ocean stretching out for miles, lighthouses and more Elizabethan houses
half hid on the bank, and ships and small boats pushing by within a
hundred rods of the windows. I stayed to dinner there and we had a
very jolly time. There were two other young men and another maiden
besides Miss Bartol. They talked principally about the stage; that is,
the Boston Stock Company, which is their sole thought and knowledge of
the drama. The Dr. would strike off now and then to philosophizing and
moralizing but his daughter would immediately sit upon him, much to my
disgust but to the evident relief of the rest. His wife is as lovely
as he is but I can't give it to you all now. Wait until I get home.
The young lady, the youths and myself came up to Boston together and
had as pleasant a ride, as the heat would allow. I left them at the
depot and went up to the Parker House and then to the Art Museum. The
statuary is plaster, the coins are copies, and by the way, I found one
exactly like mine, which, if it is genuine is worth, "well
considerable", as the personage in charge remarked. The pictures were
simply vile, only two or three that I recognized and principally Millet
and some charcoal sketches of Hunt's, who is the Apostle of Art here.
The china was very fine but they had a collection of old furniture and
armor which was better than anything else. Fresh from or rather musty
from these antiques, who should I meet but the cheerful Dixey and
Powers. We had a very jolly talk and I enjoyed it immensely, not only
myself but all the surrounding populace, as Dixey would persist in
showing the youthful some new "gag," and would break into a clog or
dialect much to the delectation of the admiring Bostonians. I am
stranded here for to night and will push on to Newport to-morrow. I'll
go see the "babes" to night, as there is nothing else in the city that
is worth seeing that I haven't investigated. I left the
Newburyportians in grief with regret. I met lots of nice people and
every one was so very kind to me, from the authoresses to the serving
maids. Good-bye.
DICK.