Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis | Page 6

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