Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis Part 17

DEAR MOTHER:

Today Barrie gave a copyright performance of "The Little Minister"

which Maude Adams is to play in the States. It was advertised by a single bill in front of the Haymarket Theater and the price of admission was five guineas. We took in fifteen guineas, the audience being Charley Frohman, Lady Craig and a man. Cyril Maude played the hero and Brandon Thomas and Barrie the two low comedy parts--two Scotchmen of Thrums. I started to play one of them, but as I insisted on making it an aged negro with songs, Barrie and Frohman got discouraged and let me play the villain, Lord Rintoul, in which character I was great. Maude played his part in five different ways and dialects so as to see which he liked best, he said. It was a bit confusing. Then one of the actors went up in the gallery and pretended to be a journalist critic who had sneaked in, and he abused the play and the actors with the exception of the man who played Whamond (himself) whom he said he thought showed great promise. Maude pretended not to know who he was and it fooled everybody. Mrs. Barrie played the gipsy and danced most of the time, which she said was her conception of the part as it was in the book. Her husband explained that this was a play, not a book, but she did not care and danced on and off. She played my daughter, and I had a great scene in which I cursed her, which got rounds of applause. Lady Lewis's daughters in beautiful Paquin dresses played Scotch la.s.sies, and giggled in all the sad parts, and one actress who had made a great success as one of the "Two Vagabonds" made everybody weep by really trying to act. At one time there were five men on the stage all talking Scotch dialect and imitating Irving at the same time. It was a truly remarkable performance. Ethel Barrymore goes back on Sat.u.r.day with Drew to play a French maid in "A Marriage of Convenience." She is announced to be engaged to Hope, I see by the papers. They are not engaged, of course, but the papers love to make matches. Look for me as sailing either on the 31st on the St. Louis or a week later. With lots and lots of love.

d.i.c.k.

In the late summer Richard returned to Marion and from there went to New York. However, at this time, the lure of England was very strong with my brother, and early December found him back in London.

LONDON, December 29th, 1897.

DEAR MOTHER:--

I had a most exciting Christmas, most of which I spent in Whitechapel in the London Hospital. I lunched with the Spenders and then went down with them carrying large packages for distribution to the sick. I expected to be terribly bored, but thought I would feel so virtuous that I would the better enjoy my dinner which I had promised to take with the McCarthys-- On the contrary, I had the most amusing time and much more fun than I had later. The patients seemed only to be playing sick, and some of them were very humorous and others very pathetic and I played tin soldiers with some, and distributed rich gifts, other people had paid for, with a lavish hand. I also sat on a little girl's cot and played dolls for an hour. She had something wrong with her spine and I wept most of the time, chiefly because she smiled all the time. She went asleep holding on to my middle finger like the baby in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." There were eighty babies in red flannel nightgowns b.u.t.toned up the back who had pillow fights in honor of the day and took turns in playing on a barrel organ, those that were strong and tall enough. In the next ward another baby in white was dying-- Its mother was a coster girl, seventeen years old, with a big hat and plumes like those the flower girls wear at Piccadilly Circus. The baby was yellow like old ivory and its teeth and gums were blue and it died while we were watching it. The mother girl was drinking tea and crying into it out of red swollen eyes, and twenty feet off one of the red nightgowned kids was playing "Louisiana Lou" on the barrel organ. The nurse put the baby's arms under the sheets and then pulled one up over its face and took the teacup away from the mother who didn't see what had happened and I came away while three young nurses were comforting the girl. Most of the nurses were very beautiful, and I neglected my duties as Santa Claus to talk to them. They would stop talking to get down on their knees and dust up the floor, which was most embarra.s.sing, you couldn't very well ask to be let to help. There was one coster who had his broken leg in a cage which moved with the leg no matter how much he tossed. He was like the man "who sat in jail without his boots, admiring how the world was made," he spent all his waking hours in wrapt admiration of the cage-- He said to me "I've been here a fortnight now, come Monday, and I can't break my leg no how. Yer can't do it, that's all-- Yer can twist, and kick, and toss, and it don't do no good. Yer jest can't do it-- Now you take notice." Then he would kick violently and the cage would run around on trolleys and keep the broken limb straight. "See!" he would exclaim, "Wot did I tell you-- Its no use of trying, yer just can't do it. 'ere I've been ten days a trying and it can't be done."

We had a very fine Christmas dinner just Ethel, the McCarthy's and I.

f.a.n.n.y, tell Charles, brought in the plum pudding with a sprig of holly in it and blazing, and after dinner I read them the Jackall-- About eleven I started to take Ethel to Miss Terry's, who lives miles beyond Kensington. There was a light fog. I said that all sorts of things ought to happen in a fog but that no one ever did have adventures nowadays. At that we rode straight into a bank of fog that makes those on the fishing banks look like Spring sunshine. You could not see the houses, nor the street, nor the horse, not even his tail. All you could see were gas jets, but not the iron that supported them. The cabman discovered the fact that he was lost and turned around in circles and the horse slipped on the asphalt which was thick with frost, and then we backed into lamp-posts and curbs until Ethel got so scared she bit her under lip until it bled. You could not tell whether you were going into a house or over a precipice or into a sea. The horse finally backed up a flight of steps, and rubbed the cabby against a front door, and jabbed the wheels into an area railing and fell down.

That, I thought, was our cue to get out, so we slipped into a well of yellow mist and felt around for each 'other until a square block of light suddenly opened in mid air and four terrified women appeared in the doorway of the house through which the cabman was endeavoring to b.u.t.t himself. They begged us to come in, and we did-- Being Christmas and because the McCarthy's always call me "King" I had put on all my decorations and the tin star and I also wore my beautiful fur coat, to which I have treated myself, and a grand good thing it is, too-- I took this off because the room was very hot, forgetting about the decorations and remarked in the same time to Ethel that it would be folly to try and get to Barkston Gardens, and that we must go back to the "d.u.c.h.ess's" for the night. At this Ethel answered calmly "yes, Duke," and I became conscious of the fact that the eyes of the four women were riveted on my fur coat and decorations. At the word "Duke"

delivered by a very pretty girl in an evening frock and with nothing on her hair the four women disappeared and brought back the children, the servants, and the men, who were so overcome with awe and excitement and Christmas cheer that they all but got down on their knees in a circle.

So, we fled out into the night followed by minute directions as to where "Your Grace" and "Your Ladyship" should turn. For years, no doubt, on a Christmas Day the story will be told in that house, wherever it may be in the millions of other houses of London, how a beautiful Countess and a wicked Duke were pitched into their front door out of a hansom cab, and after having partaken of their Christmas supper, disappeared again into a sea of fog. The only direction Ethel and I could remember was that we were to go to the right when we came to a Church, so when by feeling our way by the walls we finally reached a church we continued going on around it until we had encircled it five times or it had encircled us, we were not sure which. After the fifth lap we gave up and sat down on the steps. Ethel had on low slippers and was shivering and coughing but intensely amused and only scared for fear she would lose her voice for the first night of "Peter"-- We could hear voices sometimes, like people talking in a dream, and sometimes the sound of dance music, and a man's voice calling "Perlice" in a discouraged way as if he didn't much care whether the police came or not, but regularly like a fog siren-- I don't know how long we sat there or how long we might have sat there had not a man with a bicycle lamp loomed up out of the mist and rescued us. He had his mother with him and she said with great pride that her boy could find his way anywhere. So, we clung to her boy and followed. A cabman pa.s.sed leading his horse with one of his lamps in his other hand and I turned for an instant to speak to him and Ethel and her friends disappeared exactly as though the earth had opened. So, I yelled after them, and Ethel said "Here, I am," at my elbow. It was like the chesire cat that kept appearing and disappearing until he made Alice dizzy. We finally found a link-boy and he finally found the McCarthy's house, and I left them giving Ethel quinine and whiskey. They wanted me to stay, but I could not face dressing, in the morning. So I felt my way home and only got lost twice. The Arch on Const.i.tution Hill gave me much trouble. I thought it was the Marble Arch, and hence-- In Jermyn Street I saw two lamps burning dimly and a voice said, hearing my footsteps "where am I? I don't know where I am no more than nothing--"

I told him he was in Jermyn Street with his horse's head about twenty feet from St. James-- There was a long dramatic silence and then the voice said-- "Well, I be blowed I thought I was in Pimlico!!!"

This has been such a long letter that I shall have to skip any more. I have NO sciatica chiefly because of the fur coat, I think, and I got two Christmas presents, one from Margaret Fraser and one from the d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland-- Boxing Day I took Margaret to the matinee of the Pantomine and it lasted five hours, until six twenty, then I dressed and dined with the Hay's and went with them to the Barnum circus which began at eight and lasted until twelve. It was a busy day.

Lots of love.

d.i.c.k.

LONDON, March 20, 1898.

DEAR MOTHER:

The Nellie Farren benefit was the finest thing I have seen this year past. It was more remarkable than the Coronation, or the Jubilee. It began at twelve o'clock on Thursday, but at ten o'clock Wednesday night, the crowd began to gather around Drury Lane, and spent the night on the sidewalk playing cards and reading and sleeping. Ten hours later they were admitted, or a few of them were, as many as the galleries would hold. Arthur Collins, the manager of the Drury Lane and the man who organized the benefit, could not get a stall for his mother the day before the benefit. They were then not to be had, the last having sold for twelve guineas. I got TWO the morning of the benefit for three pounds each, and now people believe that I did get into the Coronation! The people who had stalls got there at ten o'clock, and the streets were blocked for "blocks" up to Covent Garden with hansoms and royal carriages and holders of tickets at fifty dollars apiece. It lasted six hours and brought in thirty thousand dollars. Kate Vaughan came back and danced after an absence from the stage of twelve years. Irving recited The Dream of Eugene Aram, Terry played Ophelia, Chevalier sang Mrs. Hawkins, Dan Leno gave Hamlet, Marie Tempest sang The Jewel of Asia and Hayden Coffin sang Tommy Atkins, the audience of three thousand people joining in the chorus, and for an encore singing "Oh, Nellie, Nellie Farren, may your love be ever faithful, may your pals be ever true, so G.o.d bless you Nellie Farren, here's the best of luck to you." In Trial by Jury, Gilbert played an a.s.sociate judge; the barristers were all playwrights, the jury the princ.i.p.al comedians, the chorus girls were real chorus girls from the Gaiety mixed in with leading ladies like Miss Jeffries and Miss Hanbury, who could not keep in step. But the best part of it was the pantomime. Ellaline came up a trap with a diamond dress and her hair down her back and electric lights all over her, and said, "I am the Fairy Queen," and waved her wand, at which the "First Boy" in the pantomime said, "Go long, now, do, we know your tricks, you're Ellaline Terriss"; and the clown said, "You're wrong, she's not, she's Mrs.

Seymour Hicks." Then Letty Lind came on as Columbine in black tulle, and Arthur Roberts as the policeman, and Eddy Payne as the clown and Storey as Pantaloon.

The rest of it brought on everybody. Sam Sothern played a "swell" and stole a fish. Louis Freear, a housemaid, and all the leading men appeared as policemen. No one had more than a line to speak which just gave the audience time to recognize him or her. The composers and orchestra leaders came on as a German band, each playing an instrument, and they got half through the Washington Post before the policemen beat them off. Then Marie Lloyd and all the Music Hall stars appeared as street girls and danced to the music of a hand-organ. Hayden Coffin, Plunkett Greene and Ben Davies sang as street musicians and the clown beat them with stuffed bricks. After that there was a revue of all the burlesques and comic operas, then the curtain was raised from the middle of the stage, and Nellie Farren was discovered seated at a table on a high stage with all the "legitimates" in frock-coats and walking dresses rising on benches around her.

The set was a beautiful wood scene well lighted. Wyndham stood on one side of her, and he said the yell that went up when the curtain rose was worse than the rebel yell he had heard in battles. In front of her, below the stage, were all the people who had taken part in the revue, forming a most interesting picture. There was no one in the group who had not been known for a year by posters or photographs: Letty Lind as the Geisha, Arthur Roberts as Dandy Dan. The French Girl and all the officers from The Geisha, the ballet girls from the pantomime, the bareback-riders from The Circus Girl; the Empire costumes and the monks from La Poupee, and all the Chinese and j.a.panese costumes from The Geisha. Everybody on the stage cried and all the old rounders in the boxes cried.

It was really a wonderfully dramatic spectacle to see the clown and officers and Geisha girls weeping down their grease paint. Nellie Farren's great song was one about a street Arab with the words: "Let me hold your, nag, sir, carry your little bag, sir, anything you please to give--thank'ee, sir!" She used to close her hand, then open it and look at the palm, then touch her cap with a very wonderful smile, and laugh when she said, "Thank'ee, sir!" This song was reproduced for weeks before the benefit, and played all over London, and when the curtain rose on her, the orchestra struck into it and the people shouted as though it was the national anthem. Wyndham made a very good address and so did Terry, then Wyndham said he would try to get her to speak. She has lost the use of her hands and legs and can only walk with crutches, so he put his arm around her and her son lifted her from the other side and then brought her to her feet, both crying like children. You could hear the people sobbing, it was so still. She said, "Ladies and Gentleman," looking at the stalls and boxes, then she turned her head to the people on the stage below her and said, "Brothers and Sisters," then she stood looking for a long time at the gallery G.o.ds who had been waiting there twenty hours. You could hear a long "Ah" from the gallery when she looked up there, and then a "hush"

from all over it and there was absolute silence. Then she smiled and raised her finger to her bonnet and said, "Thank'ee, sir," and sank back in her chair. It was the most dramatic thing I ever saw on a stage. The orchestra struck up "Auld Lang Syne" and they gave three cheers on the stage and in the house. The papers got out special editions, and said it was the greatest theatrical event there had ever been in London.

d.i.c.k.

CHAPTER XI

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

When the news reached Richard that the Spanish-American War seemed inevitable he returned at once to New York. Here he spent a few days in arranging to act as correspondent for the New York Herald, the London Times, and Scribner's Magazine, and then started for Key West.

Off Key West--April 24th, 1898.

On Board Smith, Herald Yacht.

DEAR MOTHER:

I wrote you such a cross gloomy letter that I must drop you another to make up for it. Since I wrote that an hour ago we have received word that war is declared and I am now on board the Smith. She is a really fine vessel as big as Benedict's yacht with plenty of deck room and big bunks. I have everything I want on board and The Herald men are two old Press men so we are good friends. If I had had another hour I believe I could have got a berth on the flag ship for Roosevelt telegraphed me the longest and strongest letter on the subject a man could write instructing the Admiral to take me on as I was writing history. Chadwick seemed willing but then the signal to set sail came and we had to stampede. All the ships have their sailing pennants up.

It is as calm as a mirror thank goodness but as hot as h.e.l.l. We expect to be off Havana tomorrow at sunset. Then what we do no one knows.

The crew is on strike above and the mate is wrestling with them but as it seems to be only a question of a few dollars it will come out all right. We expect to be back here on Sunday but may stay out later.

Don't worry if you don't hear. It is grand to see the line of battleships five miles out like dogs in a leash puffing and straining.

Thank G.o.d they'll let them slip any minute now. I don't know where "Stenie" is. I am now going to take a nap while the smooth water lasts.

d.i.c.k.

--Flagship New York--

Off Havana,

April 26, 1898.

DEAR FAMILY:

I left Key West on the morning of the 24th in the Dolphin with the idea of trying to get on board the flagship on the strength of Roosevelt's letter. Stenie Bonsal got on just before she sailed, not as a correspondent, but as a magazine-writer for McClure's, who have given him a commission, and because he could act as interpreter. I left the flagship the morning of the day I arrived. The captain of the Dolphin apologized to his officers while we were at anchor in the harbor of Key West, because his was a "cabin" and not a "gun" ship, and because he had to deliver the mails at once on board the flagship and not turn out of his course for anything, no matter how tempting a prize it might appear to be. He then proceeded to chase every sail and column of smoke on the horizon, so that the course was like a cat's cradle. We first headed for a big steamer and sounded "general quarters." It was fine to see the faces of the apprentices as they ran to get their cutla.s.ses and revolvers, their eyes open and their hair on end, with the hope that they were to board a Spanish battleship. But at the first gun she ran up an American flag, and on getting nearer we saw she was a Mallory steamer. An hour later we chased another steamer, but she was already a prize, with a prize crew on board. Then we had a chase for three hours at night; after what we believed was the Panama, but she ran away from us. We fired three sh.e.l.ls after her, and she still ran and got away. The next morning I went on board the New York with Zogbaum, the artist. Admiral Sampson is a fine man; he impressed me very much. He was very much bothered at the order forbidding correspondents on the ship, but I talked like a father to him, and he finally gave in, and was very nice about the way he did it. Since then I have had the most interesting time and the most novel experience of my life. We have been lying from three to ten miles off sh.o.r.e. We can see Morro Castle and houses and palms plainly without a gla.s.s, and with one we can distinguish men and women in the villages. It is, or was, frightfully hot, and you had to keep moving all the time to get out of the sun. I mess with the officers, but the other correspondents, the a.s.sociated Press and Ralph Paine of The World and Press of Philadelphia, with the middies. Paine got on because Scovel of The World has done so much secret service work for the admiral, running in at night and taking soundings, and by day making photographs of the coast, also carrying messages to the insurgents.

It is a wonderful ship, like a village, and as big as the Paris. We drift around in the sun or the moonlight, and when we see a light, chase after it. There is a band on board that plays twice a day. It is like a luxurious yacht, with none of the ennui of a yacht. The other night, when we were heading off a steamer and firing six-pounders across her bows, the band was playing the "star" song from the Meistersinger. Wagner and War struck me as the most fin de siecle idea of war that I had ever heard of. The nights have been perfectly beautiful, full of moonlight, when we sit on deck and smoke. It is like looking down from the roof of a high building. Yesterday they brought a Spanish officer on board, he had been picked up in a schooner with his orderly. I was in Captain Chadwick's cabin when he was brought in, and Scovel interpreted for the captain, who was more courteous than any Spanish Don that breathes. The officer said he had been on his way to see his wife and newly born baby at Matanzas, and had no knowledge that war had been declared. I must say it did me good to see him. I remembered the way the Spanish officers used to insult me in a language which I, fortunately for me, could not understand, and how I hated the sight of them, and I enjoyed seeing his red and yellow c.o.c.kade on the table before me, while I sat in a big armchair and smoked and was in hearing of the marines drilling on the upper deck.

He was invited to go to breakfast with the officers, and I sat next to him, and as it happened to be my turn to treat, I had the satisfaction of pouring drinks down his throat. I told stories about Spanish officers all the time to the rest of the mess, pretending I was telling them something else by making drawings on the tablecloth, so that the unhappy officer on his other side, who was talking Spanish to him, had a hard time not to laugh. I told Zogbaum he ought to draw a picture of him at the mess to show how we treated prisoners, and a companion one of the captain of the Compeliton, who came over with us on the Dolphin, and who showed us the marks of the ropes on his wrists and arms the Spaniards had bound him with when he was in Cabanas for nine months.

The orderly messed with the bluejackets, who treated him in the most hospitable manner. He was a poor little peasant boy, half starved and hollow-eyed, and so scared that he could hardly stand, but they took great pride in the fact that they had made him eat three times of everything. They are, without prejudice, the finest body of men and boys you would care to see, and as humorous and polite and keen as any cla.s.s of men I ever met.

The war could be ended in a month so far as the island of Cuba is concerned, if the troops were ready and brought over here. The coast to Havana for ten miles is broad enough for them to march along it, and the heights above could be covered the entire time by the fleet, so that it would be absolutely impossible for any force to withstand the awful hailstorm they would play on it. Transports carrying the provisions would be protected by the ships on the gulf side, and the guns at Morro could be shut up in twenty-four hours. This is not a dream, but the most obvious and feasible plan, and it is a disgrace if the Washington politicians delay. As to health, this is the healthiest part of the coast. The trade winds blow every day of the year, and the fever talk is all nonsense. The army certainly has delayed most scandalously in mobilizing. This talk of waiting a month is suicide.

It is a terrible expense. It keeps the people on a strain, destroys business, and the health of the troops at Tampa is, to my mind, in much greater danger than it would be on the hills around Havana, where, as Scovel says, there is as much yellow fever as there is snow. Tell Dad to urge them to act promptly. In the meanwhile I am having a magnificent time. I am burned and hungry and losing about a ton of fat a day, and I sleep finely. The other night the Porter held us up, but it was a story that never got into the papers. I haven't missed a trick so far except not getting on the flagship from the first, but that does not count now since I am on board.

I haven't written anything yet, but I am going to begin soon. I expect to make myself rich on this campaign. I get ten cents a word from Scribner's for everything I send them, if it is only a thousand words, and I get four hundred dollars a week salary from The Times, and all my expenses. I haven't had any yet, but when I go back and join the army, I am going to travel en suite with an a.s.sistant and the best and gentlest ponies; a courier and a servant, a tent and a secretary and a typewriter, so that Miles will look like a second lieutenant.

When I came out here on the Dolphin I said I was going to Tampa, lying just on the principle that it is no other newspaper-man's business where you are going. So, The Herald man at Key West, hearing this, and not knowing I WAS GOING TO THE FLAGSHIP, called Long, making a strong kick about the correspondents, Bonsal, Remington and Paine, who are, or were, with the squadron. Stenie left two days ago, hoping to get a commission on the staff of General Lee. So yesterday Scovel told me Long had cabled in answer to The Herald's protests to the admiral as follows: "Complaints have been received that correspondents Paine, Remington and Bonsal are with the squadron. Send them ash.o.r.e at once.

There must be no favoritism."

Scovel got the admiral at once to cable Long on his behalf because of his services as a spy, but as Roosevelt had done so much for me, I would not appeal over him, and this morning I sent in word to the admiral that I was leaving the ship and would like to pay my respects.

Sampson is a thin man with a gray beard. He looks like a college professor and has very fine, gentle eyes. He asked me why I meant to leave the ship, and I said I had heard one of the torpedo boats was going to Key West, and I thought I would go with her if he would allow it. He asked if I had seen the cable from Long, and I said I had heard of it, and that I was really going so as not to embarra.s.s him with my presence. He said, "I have received three different orders from the Secretary, one of them telling me I could have such correspondents on board as were agreeable to me. He now tells me that they must all go.

You can do as you wish. You are perfectly welcome to remain until the conflict of orders is cleared up." I saw he was mad and that he wanted me to stay, or at least not to go of my own wish, so that he could have a grievance out of it--if he had to send me away after having been told he could have those with him who were agreeable to him. Captain Chadwick was in the cabin, and said, "Perhaps Mr. Davis had better remain another twenty-four hours." The admiral added, "Ships are going to Key West daily." Then Chadwick repeated that he thought I had better stay another day, and made a motion to me to do so. So I said I would, and now I am waiting to see what is going to happen. Outside, Chadwick told me that something in the way of an experience would probably come off, so I have hopes. By this time, of course, you know all about it. I shall finish this later.

We began bombarding Matanzas twenty minutes after I wrote the above.