Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis | Page 9

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 any evening may prove it. For Davis the soliloquy was not courageous; it was simply true. And that was a place for it.
When "Soldiers of Fortune" was printed it had a quick and a deserved popularity. It was cheerily North American in its viewpoint of the sub-tropical republics and was very up to date. The outdoor American girl was not so established at that time, and the Davis report of her was refreshing. Robert Clay was unconsciously Dick Davis himself as he would have tried to do--Captain Stuart was the English officer that Davis had met the world over, or, closer still, he was the better side of such men which the attractive wholesomeness of Davis would draw out.