Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis
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Various Authors of Some Repute >> Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis
BY WINSTON CHURCHHILL
On that day when I read of Mr. Davis's sudden death there came
back to me a vivid memory of another day, some eighteen years
ago, when I first met him, shortly after the publication of my
first novel. I was paying an over-Sunday visit to Marion,
that quaint waterside resort where Mr. Davis lived for many
years, and with which his name is associated. On the Monday
morning, as the stage started out for the station, a young man
came running after it, caught it, and sat down in the only
empty place--beside me. He was Richard Harding Davis. I
recognized him, nor shall I forget that peculiar thrill I
experienced at finding myself in actual, physical contact with
an author. And that this author should be none other than the
creator of Gallegher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a
dry and elderly recluse, made my excitement the keener. It
happened also, after entering the smoking-car, that the
remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Mr. Davis
established himself. He looked at me, he asked if my name was
Winston Churchill, he said he had read my book. How he
guessed my identity I did not discover. But the recollection
of our talk, the strong impression I then received of Mr.
Davis's vitality and personality, the liking I conceived for
him--these have neither changed nor faded with the years, and
I recall with gratitude to-day the kindliness, the sense of
fellowship always so strong in him that impelled him to speak
as he did. A month before he died, when I met him on the
train going to Mt. Kisco, he had not changed. His
enthusiasms, his vigor, his fine passions, his fondness for
his friends, these, nor the joy he found in the pursuit of his
profession, had not faded. And there come to me now, as I
think of him filled with life, flashes from his writings that
have moved me, and move me indescribably still. "Le Style,"
as Rolland remarks, "c'est l'ame." It was so in Mr. Davis's
case. He had the rare faculty of stirring by a phrase the
imaginations of men, of including in a phrase a picture, an
event--a cataclysm. Such a phrase was that in which he
described the entry of German hosts into Brussels. He was not
a man, when enlisted in a cause, to count the cost to himself.
Many causes will miss him, and many friends, and many admirers,
yet his personality remains with us forever, in his work.
BY LEONARD WOOD
The death of Richard Harding Davis was a real loss to the
movement for preparedness. Mr. Davis had an extensive
experience as a military observer, and thoroughly appreciated
the need of a general training system like that of Australia
or Switzerland and of thorough organization of our industrial
resources in order to establish a condition of reasonable
preparedness in this country. A few days before his death he
came to Governor's Island for the purpose of ascertaining in
what line of work he could be most useful in building up sound
public opinion in favor of such preparedness as would give us
a real peace-insurance. His mind was bent on devoting his
energies and abilities to the work of public education on this
vitally important subject, and few men were better qualified
to do so, for he had served as a military observer in many
campaigns.
Throughout the Cuban campaign he was attached to the
headquarters of my regiment in Cuba as a military observer.
He was with the advanced party at the opening of the fight at
Las Guasimas, and was distinguished throughout the fight by
coolness and good conduct. He also participated in the battle
of San Juan and the siege of Santiago, and as an observer was
always where duty called him. He was a delightful companion,
cheerful, resourceful, and thoughtful of the interests and
wishes of others. His reports of the campaign were valuable
and among the best and most accurate.
The Plattsburg movement took very strong hold of him. He saw
in this a great instrument for building up a sound knowledge
concerning our military history and policy, also a very
practical way of training men for the duties of junior
officers. He realized fully that we should need in case of
war tens of thousands of officers with our newly raised
troops, and that it would be utterly impossible to prepare
them in the hurry and confusion of the onrush of modern war.
His heart was filled with a desire to serve his country to the
best of his ability. His recent experience in Europe pointed
out to him the absolute madness of longer disregarding the
need of doing those things which reasonable preparedness
dictates, the things which cannot be accomplished after
trouble is upon us. He had in mind at the time of his death a
series of articles to be written especially to build up
interest in universal military training through conveying to
our people an understanding of what organization as it exists
to-day means, and how vitally important it is for our people
to do in time of peace those things which modern war does not
permit done once it is under way.
Davis was a loyal friend, a thoroughgoing American devoted to
the best interests of his country, courageous, sympathetic,
and true. His loss has been a very real one to all of us who
knew and appreciated him, and in his death the cause of
preparedness has lost an able worker and the country a devoted
and loyal citizen.
WITH DAVIS IN VERA CRUZ, BRUSSELS, AND SALONIKA
BY JOHN T. McCRUTCHEON
In common with many others who have been with Richard Harding
Davis as correspondents, I find it difficult to realize that
he has covered his last story and that he will not be seen
again with the men who follow the war game, rushing to distant
places upon which the spotlight of news interest suddenly
centres.
It seems a sort of bitter irony that he who had covered so
many big events of world importance in the past twenty years
should be abruptly torn away in the midst of the greatest
event of them all, while the story is still unfinished and its
outcome undetermined. If there is a compensating thought, it
ties in the reflection that he had a life of almost
unparalleled fulness, crowded to the brim, up to the last
moment, with those experiences and achievements which he
particularly aspired to have. He left while the tide was at
its flood, and while he still held supreme his place as the
best reporter in his country. He escaped the bitterness of
seeing the ebb set in, when the youth to which he clung had
slipped away, and when he would have to sit impatient in the
audience, while younger men were in the thick of great, world-
stirring dramas on the stage.
This would have been a real tragedy in "Dick" Davis's case,
for, while his body would have aged, it is doubtful if his
spirit ever would have lost its youthful freshness or boyish
enthusiasm.
It was my privilege to see a good deal of Davis in the last
two years.
He arrived in Vera Cruz among the first of the sixty or
seventy correspondents who flocked to that news centre when
the situation was so full of sensational possibilities. It
was a time when the American newspaper-reading public was
eager for thrills, and the ingenuity and resourcefulness of
the correspondents in Vera Cruz were tried to the uttermost to
supply the demand.
In the face of the fiercest competition it fell to Davis's lot
to land the biggest story of those days of marking time. The
story "broke" when it became known that Davis, Medill
McCormick, and Frederick Palmer had gone through the Mexican
lines in an effort to reach Mexico City. Davis and McCormick,
with letters to the Brazilian and British ministers, got
through and reached the capital on the strength of those
letters, but Palmer, having only an American passport, was
turned back.
After an ominous silence, which furnished American newspapers
with a lively period of suspense, the two men returned safely
with wonderful stories of their experiences while under arrest
in the hands of the Mexican authorities. McCormick, in
recently speaking of Davis at that time, said that, "as a
correspondent in difficult and dangerous situations, he was
incomparable--cheerful, ingenious, and undiscouraged. When
the time came to choose between safety and leaving his
companion he stuck by his fellow captive even though, as they
both said, a firing-squad and a blank wall were by no means a
remote possibility." This Mexico City adventure was a
spectacular achievement which gave Davis and McCormick a
distinction which no other correspondents of all the ambitious
and able corps had managed to attain.
Davis usually "hunted" alone. He depended entirely upon his
own ingenuity and wonderful instinct for news situations. He
had the energy and enthusiasm of a beginner, with the
experience and training of a veteran. His interest in things
remained as keen as though he had not been years at a game
which often leaves a man jaded and blase. His
acquaintanceship in the American army and navy was wide, and
for this reason, as well as for the prestige which his fame
and position as a national character gave him, he found it
easy to establish valuable connections in the channels from
which news emanates. And yet, in spite of the fact that he
was "on his own" instead of having a working partnership with
other men, he was generous in helping at times when he was
able to do so. Davis was a conspicuous figure in Vera Cruz,
as he inevitably had been in all such situations. Wherever he
went he was pointed out. His distinction of appearance,
together with a distinction in dress, which, whether from
habit or policy, was a valuable asset in his work, made him a
marked man. He dressed and looked the "war correspondent,"
such a one as he would describe in one of his stories. He
fulfilled the popular ideal of what a member of that
fascinating profession should look like. His code of life and
habits was as fixed as that of the Briton who takes his habits
and customs and games and tea wherever he goes, no matter how
benighted or remote the spot may be.
He was just as loyal to his code as is the Briton. He carried
his bath-tub, his immaculate linen, his evening clothes, his
war equipment--in which he had the pride of a
connoisseur--wherever he went, and, what is more, he had the
courage to use the evening clothes at times when their use was
conspicuous. He was the only man who wore a dinner coat in
Vera Cruz, and each night, at his particular table in the
crowded "Portales," at the Hotel Diligencia, he was to be
seen, as fresh and clean as though he were in a New York or
London restaurant.
Each day he was up early to take the train out to the "gap,"
across which came arrivals from Mexico City. Sometimes a good
"story" would come down, as when the long-heralded and long-
expected arrival of Consul Silliman gave a first-page
"feature" to all the American papers.
In the afternoon he would play water polo over at the navy
aviation camp, and always at a certain time of the day his
"striker" would bring him his horse and for an hour or more he
would ride out along the beach roads within the American
lines.
After the first few days it was difficult to extract real
thrills from the Vera Cruz situation, but we used to ride out
to El Tejar with the cavalry patrol and imagine that we might
be fired on at some point in the long ride through unoccupied
territory; or else go out to the "front," at Legarto, where a
little American force occupied a sun-baked row of freight-
cars, surrounded by malarial swamps. From the top of the
railroad water-tank we could look across to the Mexican
outposts a mile or so away. It was not very exciting, and
what thrills we got lay chiefly in our imagination.
Before my acquaintanceship with Davis at Vera Cruz I had not
known him well. Our trails didn't cross while I was in Japan
in the Japanese-Russian War, and in the Transvaal I missed him
by a few days, but in Vera Cruz I had many enjoyable
opportunities of becoming well acquainted with him.
The privilege was a pleasant one, for it served to dispel a
preconceived and not an entirely favorable impression of his
character. For years I had heard stories about Richard
Harding Davis--stories which emphasized an egotism and self-
assertiveness which, if they ever existed, had happily ceased
to be obtrusive by the time I got to know him.
He was a different Davis from the Davis whom I had expected to
find; and I can imagine no more charming and delightful
companion than he was in Vera Cruz. There was no evidence of
those qualities which I feared to find, and his attitude was
one of unfailing kindness, considerateness, and generosity.
In the many talks I had with him I was always struck by his
evident devotion to a fixed code of personal conduct. In his
writings he was the interpreter of chivalrous, well-bred
youth, and his heroes were young, clean-thinking college men,
heroic big-game hunters, war correspondents, and idealized men
about town, who always did the noble thing, disdaining the
unworthy in act or motive. It seemed to me that he was
modelling his own life, perhaps unconsciously, after the
favored types which his imagination had created for his
stories. In a certain sense he was living a life of make
believe, wherein he was the hero of the story, and in which he
was bound by his ideals always to act as he would have the
hero of his story act. It was a quality which only one could
have who had preserved a fresh youthfulness of outlook in
spite of the hardening processes of maturity.
His power of observation was extraordinarily keen, and he not
only had the rare gift of sensing the vital elements of a
situation, but also had, to an unrivalled degree, the ability
to describe them vividly. I don't know how many of those men
at Vera Cruz tried to describe the kaleidoscopic life of the
city during the American occupation, but I know that Davis's
story was far and away the most faithful and satisfying
picture. The story was photographic, even to the sounds and
smells.
The last I saw of him in Vera Cruz was when, on the Utah, he
steamed past the flagship Wyoming, upon which I was
quartered, and started for New York. The Battenberg cup race
had just been rowed, and the Utah and Florida crews had
tied. As the Utah was sailing immediately after the race,
there was no time in which to row off the tie. So it was
decided that the names of both ships should be engraved on the
cup, and that the Florida crew should defend the title
against a challenging crew from the British Admiral Craddock's
flagship.
By the end of June, the public interest in Vera Cruz had
waned, and the corps of correspondents dwindled until there
were only a few left.
Frederick Palmer and I went up to join Carranza and Villa, and
on the 26th of July we were in Monterey waiting to start with
the triumphal march of Carranza's army toward Mexico City.
There was no sign of serious trouble, abroad. That night
ominous telegrams came, and at ten o'clock on the following
morning we were on a train headed for the States.
Palmer and Davis caught the Lusitania, sailing August 4 from
New York, and I followed on the Saint Paul, leaving three
days later. On the 17th of August I reached Brussels, and it
seemed the most natural thing in the world to find Davis
already there. He was at the Palace Hotel, where a number of
American and English correspondents were quartered.
Things moved quickly. On the 19th Irvin Cobb, Will Irwin,
Arno Dosch, and I were caught between the Belgian and German
lines in Louvain; our retreat to Brussels was cut, and for
three days, while the vast German army moved through the city,
we were detained. Then, the army having passed, we were
allowed to go back to the capital.
In the meantime Davis was in Brussels. The Germans reached
the outskirts of the city on the morning of the 20th, and the
correspondents who had remained in Brussels were feverishly
writing despatches describing the imminent fall of the city.
One of them, Harry Hansen, of the Chicago Daily News, tells
the following story, which I give in his words: "While we
were writing," says Hansen, "Richard Harding Davis walked into
the writing-room of the Palace Hotel with a bunch of
manuscript in his hand. With an amused expression he surveyed
the three correspondents filling white paper.
"`I say, men,' said Davis, `do you know when the next train
leaves?'
"`There is one at three o'clock,' said a correspondent,
looking up.
"`That looks like our only chance to get a story out,' said
Davis. `Well, we'll trust to that.'
"The story was the German invasion of Brussels, and the train
mentioned was considered the forlorn hope of the correspondents
to connect with the outside world--that is, every
correspondent thought it to be the OTHER man's hope.
Secretly each had prepared to outwit the other, and secretly
Davis had already sent his story to Ostend. He meant to
emulate Archibald Forbes, who despatched a courier with his
real manuscript, and next day publicly dropped a bulky package
in the mail-bag. "Davis had sensed the news in the occupation
of Brussels long before it happened. With dawn he went out to
the Louvain road, where the German army stood, prepared to
smash the capital if negotiations failed. His observant eye
took in all the details. Before noon he had written a
comprehensive sketch of the occupation, and when word was
received that it was under way, he trusted his copy to an old
Flemish woman, who spoke not a word of English, and saw her
safely on board the train that pulled out under Belgian
auspices for Ostend."
With passes which the German commandant in Brussels gave us
the correspondents immediately started out to see how far
those passes would carry us. A number of us left on the
afternoon of August 23 for Waterloo, where it was expected
that the great clash between the German and the Anglo-French
forces would occur. We had planned to be back the same
evening, and went prepared only for an afternoon's drive in a
couple of hired street carriages. It was seven weeks before
we again saw Brussels. On the following day (August 24) Davis
started for Mons. He wore the khaki uniform which he had worn
in many campaigns. Across his breast was a narrow bar of silk
ribbon indicating the campaigns in which he had served as a
correspondent. He so much resembled a British officer that he
was arrested as a British derelict and was informed that he
would be shot at once.
He escaped only by offering to walk to Brand Whitlock, in
Brussels, reporting to each officer he met on the way. His
plan was approved, and as a hostage on parole he appeared
before the American minister, who quickly established his
identity as an American of good standing, to the satisfaction
of the Germans.
In the following few months our trails were widely separated.
I read of his arrest by German officers on the road to Mons;
later I read the story of his departure from Brussels by train
to Holland--a trip which carried him through Louvain while the
town still was burning; and still later I read that he was
with the few lucky men who were in Rheims during one of the
early bombardments that damaged the cathedral. By amazing
luck, combined with a natural news sense which drew him
instinctively to critical places at the psychological moment,
he had been a witness of the two most widely featured stories
of the early weeks of the war.
Arrested by the Germans in Belgium, and later by the French in
France, he was convinced that the restrictions on correspondents
were too great to permit of good work.
So he left the European war zone with the widely quoted
remark: "The day of the war correspondent is over."
And yet I was not surprised when, one evening, late in
November of last year, he suddenly walked into the room in
Salonika where William G. Shepherd, of the United Press,
"Jimmy Hare," the veteran war photographer, and I had
established ourselves several weeks before.
The hotel was jammed, and the city, with a normal capacity of
about one hundred and seventy-five thousand, was struggling to
accommodate at least a hundred thousand more. There was not a
room to be had in any of the better hotels, and for several
days we lodged Davis in our room, a vast chamber which
formerly had been the main dining-room of the establishment,
and which now was converted into a bedroom. There was room
for a dozen men, if necessary, and whenever stranded Americans
arrived and could find no hotel accommodations we simply
rigged up emergency cots for their temporary use.
The weather in Salonika at this time, late November, was
penetratingly cold. In the mornings the steam coils struggled
feebly to dispel the chill in the room.
Early in the morning after Davis had arrived, we were aroused
by the sound of violent splashing, accompanied by shuddering
gasps, and we looked out from the snug warmth of our beds to
see Davis standing in his portable bath-tub and drenching
himself with ice-cold water. As an exhibition of courageous
devotion to an established custom of life it was admirable,
but I'm not sure that it was prudent.
For some reason, perhaps a defective circulation or a weakened
heart, his system failed to react from these cold-water baths.
All through the days he complained of feeling chilled. He
never seemed to get thoroughly warmed, and of us all he was
the one who suffered most keenly from the cold. It was all
the more surprising, for his appearance was always that of a
man in the pink of athletic fitness--ruddy-faced, clear-eyed,
and full of tireless energy.
On one occasion we returned from the French front in Serbia to
Salonika in a box car lighted only by candles, bitterly cold,
and frightfully exhausting. We were seven hours in travelling
fifty-five miles, and we arrived at our destination at three
o'clock in the morning. Several of the men contracted
desperate colds, which clung to them for weeks. Davis was
chilled through, and said that of all the cold he had ever
experienced that which swept across the Maeedonian plain from
the Balkan highlands was the most penetrating. Even his heavy
clothing could not afford him adequate protection.
When he was settled in his own room in our hotel he installed
an oil-stove which burned beside him as he sat at his desk and
wrote his stories. The room was like an oven, but even then
he still complained of the cold.
When he left he gave us the stove, and when we left, some time
later, it was presented to one of our doctor friends out in a
British hospital, where I'm sure it is doing its best to thaw
the Balkan chill out of sick and wounded soldiers.
Davis was always up early, and his energy and interest were as
keen as a boy's. We had our meals together, sometimes in the
crowded and rather smart Bastasini's, but more often in the
maelstrom of humanity that nightly packed the Olympos Palace
restaurant. Davis, Shepherd, Hare, and I, with sometimes Mr.
and Mrs. John Bass, made up these parties, which, for a period
of about two weeks or so, were the most enjoyable daily events
of our lives.
Under the glaring lights of the restaurant, and surrounded by
British, French, Greek, and Serbian officers, German,
Austrian, and Bulgarian civilians, with a sprinkling of
American, English, and Scotch nurses and doctors, packed so
solidly in the huge, high-ceilinged room that the waiters
could barely pick their way among the tables, we hung for
hours over our dinners, and left only when the landlord and
his Austrian wife counted the day's receipts and paid the
waiters at the end of the evening.
One could not imagine a more charming and delightful companion
than Davis during these days. While he always asserted that
he could not make a speech, and was terrified at the thought
of standing up at a banquet-table, yet, sitting at a dinner-
table with a few friends who were only too eager to listen
rather than to talk, his stories, covering personal
experiences in all parts of the world, were intensely vivid,
with that remarkable "holding" quality of description which
characterizes his writings.
He brought his own bread--a coarse, brown sort, which he
preferred to the better white bread--and with it he ate great
quantities of butter. As we sat down at the table his first
demand was for "Mastika," a peculiar Greek drink distilled
from mastic gum, and his second demand invariably was "Du
beurre!" with the "r's" as silent as the stars; and if it
failed to come at once the waiter was made to feel the
enormity of his tardiness.
The reminiscences ranged from his early newspaper days in
Philadelphia, and skipping from Manchuria to Cuba and Central
America, to his early Sun days under Arthur Brisbane; they
ranged through an endless variety of personal experiences
which very nearly covered the whole course of American history
in the past twenty years.
Perhaps to him it was pleasant to go over his remarkable
adventures, but it could not have been half as pleasant as it
was to hear them, told as they were with a keenness of
description and brilliancy of humorous comment that made them
gems of narrative.