Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis | Page 7

him that to touch upon
them all would fill a volume. There were the patriotism and the
Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and
from which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers:
those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic
efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of
this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view. He was a
quickener of the public conscience. That people are beginning to think
tolerantly of preparedness, that a nation which at one time looked
yellow as a dandelion is beginning to turn Red, White, and Blue is
owing in some measure to him.
R. H. D. thought that war was unspeakably terrible. He thought that
peace at the price which our country has been forced to pay for it was
infinitely worse. And he was one of those who have gradually taught
this country to see the matter in the same way.
I must come to a close now, and I have hardly scratched the surface of
my subject. And that is a failure which I feel keenly but which was
inevitable. As R. H. D. himself used to say of those deplorable
"personal interviews" which appear in the newspapers, and in which the
important person interviewed is made by the cub reporter to say things
which he never said, or thought, or dreamed of--"You can't expect a
fifteen-dollar- a-week brain to describe a thousand-dollar-a-week
brain."
There is, however, one question which I should attempt to answer. No
two men are alike. In what one salient thing did R. H. D. differ from
other men--differ in his personal character and in the character of his
work? And that question I can answer off-hand, without taking thought,
and be sure that I am right.

An analysis of his works, a study of that book which the Recording
Angel keeps will show one dominant characteristic to which even his
brilliancy, his clarity of style, his excellent mechanism as a writer are
subordinate; and to which, as a man, even his sense of duty, his powers
of affection, of forgiveness, of loving-kindness are subordinate, too;
and that characteristic is cleanliness. The biggest force for cleanliness
that was in the world has gone out of the world--gone to that Happy
Hunting Ground where "Nobody hunts us and there is nothing to hunt."

BY BOOTH TARKINGTON
To the college boy of the early nineties Richard Harding Davis was the
"beau ideal of jeunesse doree," a sophisticated heart of gold. He was of
that college boy's own age, but already an editor--already publishing
books! His stalwart good looks were as familiar to us as were those of
our own football captain; we knew his face as we knew the face of the
President of the United States, but we infinitely preferred Davis's.
When the Waldorf was wondrously completed, and we cut an exam. in
Cuneiform Inscriptions for an excursion to see the world at lunch in its
new magnificence, and Richard Harding Davis came into the Palm
Room--then, oh, then, our day was radiant! That was the top of our
fortune: we could never have hoped for so much. Of all the great
people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see.
The boys of those days left college to work, to raise families, to grow
grizzled; but the glamour remained about Davis; HE never grew
grizzled. Youth was his great quality.
All his writing has the liveliness of springtime; it stirs with an
unsuppressible gayety, and it has the attraction which companionship
with him had: there is never enough. He could be sharp; he could write
angrily and witheringly; but even when he was fiercest he was buoyant,
and when his words were hot they were not scalding but rather of a dry,
clean indignation with things which he believed could, if they would,
be better. He never saw evil but as temporary.
Following him through his books, whether he wrote of home or carried
his kind, stout heart far, far afield, we see an American writing to
Americans. He often told us about things abroad in terms of New York;
and we have all been to New York, so he made for us the pictures he
wished us to see. And when he did not thus use New York for his

colors he found other means as familiar to us and as suggestive; he
always made us SEE. What claims our thanks in equal measure, he
knew our kind of curiosity so well that he never failed to make us see
what we were most anxious to see. He knew where our dark spots were,
cleared up the field of vision, and left us unconfused. This discernment