Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis | Page 9

its critics had begun of late to comprehend. It
had not inspired a body of disciples like Kipling's, but it had helped to
clear the air and to give a new proof of the vitality of certain
ideals--even of a few of the simpler ones now outmoded in current
masterpieces; and it was at its best far truer in an artistic sense than it
was the fashion of its easy critics to allow. Whether Davis could or
would have written a novel of the higher rank is a useless question now;
he himself, who was a critic of his own work without illusions or
affectation, used to say that he could not; but it is certain that in the
early part of "Captain Macklin" he displayed a power really
Thackerayan in kind.
Of his descriptive writing there need be no fear of speaking with
extravagance; he had made himself, especially in his later work,
through long practice and his inborn instinct for the significant and the
fresh aspect, quite the best of all contemporary correspondents and
reporters; and his rivals in the past could be easily numbered.

BY AUGUSTUS THOMAS
One spring afternoon in 1889 a member brought into the Lambs Club
house--then on Twenty-sixth Street--as a guest Mr. Richard Harding
Davis. I had not clearly caught the careless introduction, and,
answering my question, Mr. Davis repeated the surname. He did not
pronounce it as would a Middle Westerner like myself, but more as a
citizen of London might. To spell his pronunciation Dyvis is to
burlesque it slightly, but that is as near as it can be given phonetically.
Several other words containing a long a were sounded by him in the
same way, and to my ear the rest of his speech had a related
eccentricity. I am told that other men educated in certain Philadelphia
schools have a similar diction, but at that time many of Mr. Davis's new
acquaintances thought the manner was an affectation. I mention the
peculiarity, which after years convinced me was as native to him as was
the color of his eyes, because I am sure that it was a barrier between
him and some persons who met him only casually.
At that time he was a reporter on a Philadelphia newspaper, and in

appearance was what he continued to be until his death, an unassertive
but self-respecting, level-eyed, clean-toothed, and wholesome athlete.
The reporter developed rapidly into the more serious workman, and
amongst the graver business was that of war correspondent.
I have known fraternally several war correspondents--Dick Davis, Fred
Remington, John Fox, Caspar Whitney, and others--and it seems to me
that, while differing one from another as average men differ, they had
in common a kind of veteran superiority to trivial surprise, a tolerant
world wisdom that mere newspaper work in other departments does not
bring. At any rate, and however acquired, Dick Davis had the quality.
And with that seasoned calm he kept and cultivated the reporter sense.
He had insight--the faculty of going back of appearances. He saw the
potential salients in occurrences and easily separated them from the
commonplace--and the commonplace itself when it was informed by a
spirit that made it helpful did not mislead him by its plainness.
That is another war-correspondent quality. He saw when adherence to
duty approached the heroic. He knew the degree of pressure that gave it
test conditions and he had an unadulterated, plain, bread-and-water
appreciation of it.
I think that fact shows in his stories. He liked enthusiastically to write
of men doing men's work and doing it man fashion with full-blooded
optimism.
At his very best he was in heart and mind a boy grown tall. He had a
boy's undisciplined indifference to great personages not inconsistent
with his admiration of their medals. By temperament he was impulsive
and partisan, and if he was your friend you were right until you were
obviously very wrong. But he liked "good form," and had adopted the
Englishman's code of "things no fellow could do"--therefore his
impulsiveness was without offense and his partisanship was not
quarrelsome.
In the circumstance of this story of "Soldiers of Fortune" he could
himself have been either Clay or Stuart and he had the humor of
MacWilliams.
In the clash between Clay and Stuart, when Clay asks the younger man
if the poster smirching Stuart's relation to Madame Alvarez is true, it is
Davis talking through both men, and when, standing alone, Clay lifts
his hat and addresses the statue of General Bolivar, it is Davis at his

best.
Modern criticism has driven the soliloquy from the theatre, but modern
criticism in that respect is immature and wrong. The soliloquy exists.
Any one observing the number of business men who, talking aloud to
themselves, walk Fifth Avenue