Part 5 (1/2)

That was a fine tea you gave I should like to have heard the good talk It was like the regienerals with no privates

Your

MOTHER

This is a letter written by my father after the publication of Richard's story ”A Walk up the Avenue” Richard frequently spoke of his father as his ”kindest and severest critic”

PHILADELPHIA, July 22nd, 1890

1030 P M

MY DEAR Boy:

You can do it; you have done it; it is all right I have read A Walk up the Avenue It is far and away the best thing you have ever done--Full of fine subtle thought, of rare,

I aht I shall only be afraid--when I am afraid--that dick the et how ood Lord and to himself he is and will be for it A hter than others to whoreat duties to do; he owes tribute to the giver

Don't let the world's temptations in any of its forms come between you and your work Make your life worthy of your talent, and huht ask God to help you to do it

I aood work, with brain, bone, nerve, low in it Reainst yourself preventing you doing any work less good You have yourself made your record, you can't lower it You can only beat it

Lovingly, DAD

In the latter part of Deceing editor of Harper's Weekly George William Curtis was then its editor, and at this tireater influence for the welfare of the country As Richard was then but twenty-six, his appointment to his new editorial duties came as a distinct honor The two years that Richard had spent on The Evening Sun had been probably the happiest he had ever known He really loved New York, and at this time Paris and London held no such place in his affections as they did in later years And indeed there was small reason why these should not have been happy years for any young man

At twenty-six Richard had already accomplished much, and his name had becohout the country Youth and health he had, and many friends, and a talent that promised to carry him far in the profession he loved His new position paid hier than he had received heretofore, and he now deher terms for his stories

All of which ell for Richard because as his incorew his tastes I have kno men who cared less for money than did my brother, and I have knoho cared more for what it could buy for his friends and for hie suard as income but never capital A bond or a share of stock e The rainy day which is the bugaboo for the most of us, never seemed to show on his horizon For aquality of his creative faculties he had an infinite faith in the future, and indeed his own experience seemed to show that he was justified in this belief It could not have been very long after his start as a fiction writer that he received as high a price for his work as any of his contemporaries; and just previous to his death, ned a contract to write six stories at a figure which, so far as I knoas the highest ever offered an American author In any case, money or the lack of it certainly never caused Richard any worri the early days of which I write For what he made he worked extre of the ht him caused him infinite happiness He enjoyed the reputation he had won and the friends that such a reputation helped hi entertained, and he enjoyed pretty s of life And all of this he enjoyed with the naive, almost boyish enthusiasm that only one could to whom it had all been ton wrote at the tie boy of the early nineties Richard Harding Davis was the 'beau ideal of jeunesse doree,' a sophisticated heart of gold He was of that college boy's own age, but already an editor--already publishi+ng books! His stalwart good looks were as familiar to us as were those of our own football captain; we knew his face as we knew the face of the President of the United States, but we infinitely preferred Davis's When the Waldorf ondrously completed, and we cut an exam in Cuneiform Inscriptions for an excursion to see the world at lunch in its newDavis came into the Palm Room--then, oh, then, our day was radiant! That was the top of our fortune; we could never have hoped for so reat people of every continent, this was the one we most desired to see”

Richard's intimate friends of these days were Charles Dana Gibson, who illustrated a number of ne, Helen Benedict, now Mrs Thos, Ethel Barrymore, Maude Adams, E H Sothern, his brother, Sam, and Arthur Brisbane None of this little circle was married at the time, its various members were seldom apart, and they extracted an enormous amount of fun out of life I had recently settled in New York, and we had roohth Street, where we lived very comfortably for many years Indeed Richard did not leave thee in the summer of 1899 They were very pleasant, sunny roo-rooave many teas and supper-parties But of all the happy incidents I can recall at the Twenty-eighth Street house, the one I reht that Richard received the first statement and check for his first book of short stories, and before the un to come in as fast as it did afterward We were on our way to dinner at so envelope on the uessed it would be for one hundred and ninety dollars, but with a rather doubting heart I raised ers, Richard had finally torn open the envelope and found a check for nine hundred and odd dollars, what a wild dance we did about the hall-table, and what a dinner we had that night! Not at the inally intended, but at Del these days that Seymour Hicks and his lovely wife Ellaline Terriss first visited America, and they and Richard formed a mutual attachment that lasted until his death

Richard had always taken an intense interest in the dra editor of Harper's Weekly had ht Robert Hilliard did a one-act version of Richard's short story, ”Her First Appearance,” which under the title of ”The Littlest Girl” he played in vaudeville for many years E H

Sothern and Richard had ether, but the only actual result they ever attained was a one-act version Sothern did at the old Lyceuen” It was an extre draen, but for the forty-five e continuously alone, and as it preceded a play of the regulation length, the effort proved too th, and after a few perforh it was several years after this thatplay was produced he never lost interest in the craft of playwriting, and only waited for the time and means to really devote himself to it

BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891

DEAR FAMILY:--

This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that h I have at last found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York