MR. WILLIAM STEARNS DAVIS, the author of “A Friend of Cæsar,” “God Wills It,” and “The Saint of the Dragon’s Dale,” was born on April 30, 1877, at the home of his grandfather, President William Stearns of Amherst College. His father is William V. M. Davis, who for many years has been pastor of the First Parish Church of Pittsfield, Mass. Before coming to Pittsfield, Mr. Davis, Senior, was pastor of the Euclid Avenue Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, O.; and the author of “God Wills It” spent his boyhood in that city. From both his father and his mother he inherited literary tastes, and he has always lived in the atmosphere of books.
It was his fortune, good or bad, to be shut out from the normal boy-life, from the age of ten to eighteen, by a sickness that baffled the physicians. During these years of imprisonment, however, he learned to forget his pain by historical reading, and, later, by trying to write for himself histories and historical romances. His father preserves some seven thousand pages of manuscript written before the boy was eighteen. During the years before he entered Harvard he wrote six historical novels, none of which has ever seen the light of day, or ever will. At the age of eighteen a new physician discovered and removed the cause of his sickness. Immediately the boy’s ambition arose; and he fitted himself, in about eighteen months, to enter Harvard College. His schooling had been much interrupted by illness and invalidism, but his mind was so keen and active that when he was able to study, he more than made up for lost time.
Entering Harvard when he was twenty, he graduated in 1900, at the age of twenty-three. He not only went through in three years, which is a rare feat, but he also attained such high rank in his class that he was the first drawn for the Phi Beta Kappa, in a class of nearly five hundred men. In particular he distinguished himself in historical studies; but he made no attempt at writing for publication, beyond a few bits of verse, until his sophomore year at Harvard.
During that year he wrote his first novel, “A Friend of Cæsar.” He gathered the materials and compiled the outline for the book while too ill to pursue legitimate consecutive studies. The book was actually written as a jeu d’esprit and without thought of publication. It was immediately received as a remarkable attempt to reconstruct ancient life. After graduating, he stayed another year at Harvard; and while thus gaining his master’s degree, he wrote his second book, “God Wills It,” a vivid picture of European society at the time of the First Crusade. His first book established him at once as one of the writers who are trying to do something worth while, and who are worth consideration. Primarily, he desired to write an interesting story. Secondarily, he tried to render lucid certain phases in ancient society and to show the development of character and the true greatness of Julius Cæsar. Besides this, he wished to make the classical atmosphere somewhat less vague and impracticable than it is to a great many people, even cultivated people, to-day.
The year following his last at Harvard was spent largely in European travel, during which, however, he found time to write a third story. Like his others, it dealt with life at a time very remote from the present. The new novel upon which Mr. Davis is now working, by the way, pictures the life of Athens at the era of its greatest glory, about the year 440 B.C. Many of the famous men of Athens at that time enter into the book, which has for hero a typical young Athenian.
As in the case of many bright men who have not enjoyed good health, Mr. Davis is essentially a student and a scholar. (It is his plan, by the way, to return to Harvard this fall to complete his studies for the doctorate.) Yet his interest in the eras of which he writes is first of all concerned with their human elements. Who the people of those days were, how they lived and thought and acted, what they moved toward, and what they believed and aimed for, constitute his chief interest in them. His style is good; his narrative is always clear; his plots, though containing plenty of elements to afford variety, are never so complicated as to be confusing. His readers find that peculiar unconscious enjoyment which comes from a book wherein the author has had something to say and has said it well.
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