Evening star., 1961-03-05

his greater colleague, Stephen
Crane, but red leather was
typical of the public appear
ance of Richard Harding
Davis.
/ am now not at all patron
izing of Davis, having read
the Langford biography. In
the 1905 one of the most
successful writer's America
has ever known, Davis today
can find few so poor as to do
him honor. Certainly not Mr..
Langford, who does his best
to discover something of more
than historical interest in
Davis fiction, and confeSseS
failure. But just as there are
great writer's whose imper-
fectionS are interesting, Davis
steps from Mr.. Langford'S
pages a man with few literary
accomplishments Except, of
course, fame, popularity, uni
versal demand) but with
blotcheS if not of greatness
at least of exceedingly arrest
ing individuality. 1t is the
quite special merit of Mr..
Langford'S book that in deal
ing with a second-rate liter
airy figure it makes no at
tempt to add a cubit to the
stature of its protagoniSt, but
rather to show him a living
man as interesting as a char
acter of fiction.
Richard Harding Davis was
a writer who from his earliest
days never had difficulty in
finding a market for any
thing he wrote-and the same
is true of his mother and, to
a lesser degree, of his father.
It is a trifle ironic that in his
long literary biography the
only piece of writing for
which Mr.. Langford expresses
unqualified enthusiasm len
thuSiaSm shared with many
other students of 18th CEN
tury American fictionD is
Life in the Iron Mills" the
first story Of Rebecca Hard
ing, Davis mother, written
when she was 20 and pub
lished in the Atlantic
Monthly in 1861. 1t is a re-
markable story. grim, un-
sentimental, realistic.
1t was bought on sight by
James T. Fields, the editor
of the Atlantic, who encour-
aged the unknown author
and asked for more. More
followed at once; indeed.
Rebecca Harding stopped
writing only a year before
her death in 1910, and she
always had a large public
for her stories, novels, and
later her polemical works.
But she soon married the
writer of a fan letter, Clarke
Davis, a young Philadelphia
lawyer and journalist, and,
spoiled by popularity and
made careless by the neces-
sity for money. she did not
live up to the promise of her
very first work.
Clarke Davis also published
a novel. but journalism was
his trade. For years he was
editor of the Philadelphia
Public Ledger.
The boy Richard, born in
1864, grew up in a Solicitous
and loving family, on familiar
terms with many of the we'll
known figures in the literary
world and with even more
stellar individuals from the
world of the stage, which
was his fathers lifelong
hobbyhorse. He developed
into a combination of all the
virtues Of all the Rover boys,
except that certainly there
must be one Rover who is
studious, and Richard was
always extraordinarily bad
at school, even in his English
compositions. But he was
the very model Of a model
romantic hero - handsome,
dashing. courteous, brave,
honorable, sociable. These
are by no means virtues
typical only of adolescence,
but usually we expect to find
them alloyed, as a man grows
up, with other more intel
lectual qualities. 1t is Mr..
Langford's thesis that with
Davis 1t never happened
that he was still in search
of an elusive maturity when
he died in his SD year, in
many respects a man not
unlike Hemingway's Fran
els Macomber.
After unsuccessful endeav-
ors for a formal education in
Lehigh University and Johns
Hopkins. Davis took up the
career Of his father, and be-
came a cub reporter. Today
he is remembered, if at all,
by his fiction, but If that now
appears stilted, awkward and
juvenile, his writing seems
quite different when it is re-
counting something that the
writer had actually seen
happen. I find this to be true
not only in the early stories
quoted by Langford, but,
generally speaking, in all the
books and magazine articles
Davis wrote as feature writer,
world-traveler and war cor
respondent.
Luck and a knack for vivid
and flashy handling of news
stories led the young news
paperrnan after short stints
on several papers to Arthur
Brisbane and the New York
Evening Sun. Brisbane, Davis
age and already a managing
editor, served his paper well,
although in the long run he
may have done a disservice to
Davis and American letters,
for he let the young writer
nff his heat to write a weekly