RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
ICHARD HARDING DAVIS has shown a marvelous skill in seeing the world, in travel, and of describing it as he sees it. He is not a profound student of the mystery of the human mind, but he possesses in high degree and in rare quality an instinct of selection, a clear sense of an artistic situation in a group of more or less ordinary circumstances and a gift in interesting description. He is, in short, a very clever newspaper reporter who has transferred his field of service from the region of the actual to the realm of the imaginary. His reputation, however, is about equally divided between his works of description and travel and his stories of a more imaginative order, though in both classes of writings, he is above everything else a describer of what he has seen.
He was born in Philadelphia in 1864, the son of L. Clark Davis, an editor of reputation, and Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of many good stories, so that the child had a literary inheritance and an hereditary bent for letters. He studied for three years in Lehigh University and one year in Johns Hopkins, after which he began his interesting career as a journalist, serving successively “The Record,” “Press,” and “Telegraph” of Philadelphia. On his return from a European trip, he became connected with the New York “Evening Sun,” for which he wrote the famous series of “Van Bibber Sketches.”
The story, however, which gave him his first real fame was “Gallegher,” the scene of which is laid in Philadelphia, though, as is true of all his stories, locality plays but little part in his tales, modes of life and not scenery being the main feature.
He describes the happy-go-lucky life of the young club man, adventures in saloons, and scenes among burglars with remarkable realism, for as reporter he lived for a time among the “reprobates,” in disguise, to make a careful study of their manner of life. Again when he describes “The West from a Car Window,” he is giving scenes which he saw and types of life which he closely observed. His books always have the distinctive mark of spirit; they are full of life and activity, everything moves on and something “happens.” This is as true of his books of travel as of his stories. He has traveled extensively, and he has given descriptions of most of his journeys.
Beside “The West from a Car Window” he has written, with the same reportorial skill and fidelity to observed facts, a book of descriptions of life and manners in the East, with scenes and incidents at Gibraltar and Tangiers, in Cairo, Athens and Constantinople.
He has also produced a book of travels in England, which touches rather the surface of English life than the deeper traits of character which Emerson has so faithfully described. Davis writes as reporter of what is easily observed, while the other writes as philosopher. His latest collection of stories which shows his storytelling faculties at their best is called “The Exiles and Other Stories.” His most recent service as a journalist was as correspondent of “The London Times,” with the Greek forces during their recent humiliating conflict with the Turks. The selection given below will illustrate his vigorous style and the vivid character of his descriptions.
THE GREEK DEFENCE OF VELESTINO.
(FROM THE “LONDON TIMES.”)
HERE is a round hill to the north of the town, standing quite alone. It has a perfectly flat top, and its proportions are exactly those of a giant bucket set upside down. We found the upper end of this bucket crowded with six mountain guns [there was one other correspondent with Mr. Davis at the time], and the battery was protesting violently. When it had uttered its protest the guns would throw themselves into the air, and would turn a complete somersault, as though with delight at the mischief they had done, or would whirl themselves upon one wheel while the other spun rapidly in the air. Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis was in command of the battery. It was he who had repulsed a Turkish cavalry charge of a few days before with this same battery, and he was as polite and calm and pleased with his excitable little guns as though they weighed a hundred tons each, and could send a shell nine miles instead of a scant three thousand yards.
“From this hill there was nothing to be seen of the Turks but puffs of smoke in the plain, so we slid down its steep side and clambered up the ridges in front of us, where long rows of infantry were outlined against the sky.... A bare-headed peasant boy, in dirty white petticoats, who seemed to consider the engagement in the light of an entertainment, came dancing down the hill to show us the foot-paths that led up the different ridges. He was one of the villagers who had not run away or who was not farther up the valley, taking pot-shots at the hated Turks from behind rocks. He talked and laughed as he ran ahead of us, with many gestures, and imitated mockingly the sound of the bullets, and warned us with grave solicitude to be careful, as though he was in no possible danger himself. I saw him a great many times during the day, guiding company after company through the gulleys, and showing them how to advance protected by the slope of the hills—a self-constituted scout—and with much the manner of a landed proprietor escorting visitors over his estate. And whenever a shell struck near him, he would run and retrieve the pieces, and lay them triumphantly at the feet of the officers, like a little fox-terrier that has scampered after a stick and brought it to his master’s feet.
“The men in the first trench—which was the only one which gave us a clear view of the Turkish forces—received us with cheerful nods and scraped out a place beside them, and covered the moist earth with their blankets. They exhibited a sort of childish pride and satisfaction at being under fire; and so far from showing the nervousness and shattered morale which had been prophesied for them after the rout at Larissa, they appeared on the contrary more than content. As the day wore on, they became even languidly bored with it all, and some sang in a low crooning tone, and others, in spite of the incessant rush of the shells, dozed in the full glare of the sun, and still others lay humped and crouched against the earthworks when the projectiles tore up the earth on the hill behind us. But when the order came to fire, they would scramble to their knees with alacrity, and many of them would continue firing on their own account, long after the whistle had sounded to cease firing. Some of the officers walked up and down, and directed the men in the trenches at their feet with the air of judges or time-keepers at an athletic meeting, who were observing a tug-of-war. Others exposed themselves in what looked like a spirit of braggadocio, for they moved with a swagger and called upon the men to notice how brave they were. Other officers rose only when it was necessary to observe some fresh movement upon the part of the enemy, and they did this without the least haste and simply as a part of their work, and regarded the bullets that instantly beset them as little as if they were so many flies.
“A Turkish soldier dragging a mule loaded with ammunition had appeared a quarter of a mile below us, and at sight of him the soldiers at once recognized that there was something tangible, something that could show some sign if they hit it. The white smoke they had aimed at before had floated away, but at the sight of this individual soldier the entire line ceased firing at the enemy’s trenches, and opened on the unhappy Turk and his mule, and as the dust spurted up at points nearer and nearer to where he stood, their excitement increased in proportion, until, when he gave the mule a kick and ran for his life, there was a triumphant shout all along the line, as though they had repulsed a regiment. That one man and his load of ammunition had for a few minutes represented to them the entire Turkish army.
“As the Turks suddenly appeared below us, clambering out of a long gully, it was as though they had sprung from the earth. On the moment the smiling landscape changed like a scene at a theatre, and hundreds of men rose from what had apparently been deserted hilltops, and stood outlined in [♦]silhouette against the sunset, waves of smoke ran from crest to crest, spitting flashes of red flame, and men’s voices shrieked and shouted, and the Turkish shells raced each other so fiercely that they beat out the air until it groaned. It had come up so suddenly that it was like two dogs springing at each other’s throats, and, in a greater degree, it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as though with personal hate—one crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon; and to those who could do nothing but lie face downwards and listen to it, it seemed as though they had been caught in a burning building, and that the walls and roof were falling in on them. I do not know how long it lasted—probably not more than five minutes, although it seemed much longer than that—but finally the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and from hilltop to hilltop the officers’ whistles sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks had been driven back, and for the fourth day the Greeks had held Velestino successfully against them.”
[♦] ‘silhoutte’ replaced with ‘silhouette’
