Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis | Page 8

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