Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis

BY WINSTON CHURCHHILL

On that day when I read of Mr. Davis's sudden death there came back to me a vivid memory of another day, some eighteen years ago, when I first met him, shortly after the publication of my first novel. I was paying an over-Sunday visit to Marion, that quaint waterside resort where Mr. Davis lived for many years, and with which his name is associated. On the Monday morning, as the stage started out for the station, a young man came running after it, caught it, and sat down in the only empty place—beside me. He was Richard Harding Davis. I recognized him, nor shall I forget that peculiar thrill I experienced at finding myself in actual, physical contact with an author. And that this author should be none other than the creator of Gallegher, prepossessing, vigorous, rather than a dry and elderly recluse, made my excitement the keener. It happened also, after entering the smoking-car, that the remaining vacant seat was at my side, and here Mr. Davis established himself. He looked at me, he asked if my name was Winston Churchill, he said he had read my book. How he guessed my identity I did not discover. But the recollection of our talk, the strong impression I then received of Mr. Davis's vitality and personality, the liking I conceived for him—these have neither changed nor faded with the years, and I recall with gratitude to-day the kindliness, the sense of fellowship always so strong in him that impelled him to speak as he did. A month before he died, when I met him on the train going to Mt. Kisco, he had not changed. His enthusiasms, his vigor, his fine passions, his fondness for his friends, these, nor the joy he found in the pursuit of his profession, had not faded. And there come to me now, as I think of him filled with life, flashes from his writings that have moved me, and move me indescribably still. "Le Style," as Rolland remarks, "c'est l'ame." It was so in Mr. Davis's case. He had the rare faculty of stirring by a phrase the imaginations of men, of including in a phrase a picture, an event—a cataclysm. Such a phrase was that in which he described the entry of German hosts into Brussels. He was not a man, when enlisted in a cause, to count the cost to himself. Many causes will miss him, and many friends, and many admirers, yet his personality remains with us forever, in his work.