VIII. CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA
About January 1, 1895, Richard accompanied by his friends
Somers Somerset and Lloyd C. Griscom, afterward our minister
to Tokio and ambassador to Brazil and Italy, started out on a
leisurely trip of South and Central America. With no very
definite itinerary, they sailed from New Orleans, bent on
having a good time, and as many adventures as possible, which
Richard was to describe in a series of articles. These
appeared later on in a volume entitled "Three Gringos in
Venezuela."
January, 1895.
[DEAR FAM:]
On board Breakwater at anchor. You will be
pleased to
hear that I am writing this in a fine state of perspiration in
spite of the fact that I have light weight flannels, no
underclothes and all the windows open. It is going to storm
and then it will be cooler. We have had a bully time so far
although the tough time is still to come, that will be going
from Puerto Cortez to Tegucigalpa. At Belize the Governor
treated us charmingly and gave us orderlies and launches and
lunches and advice and me a fine subject for a short story.
For nothing has struck me as so sad lately as did Sir Anthony
Moloney K. C. M. G. watching us go off laughing and joking in
his gilded barge to wherever we pleased and leaving him
standing alone
on his lawn with some papers to sign and then a dinner
tete-a-tete with his Secretary and so on to the end of his
life. It was pathetic to hear him listen to all the gossip
from the outside world and to see how we pleased him when we
told him we were getting more bald than he was and that he
would make a fine appearance in the Row at his present weight.
He had not heard of Trilby!!
We struck a beautiful place today called Livingston where
we went ashore and photographed the army in which there was no
boy older than eighteen and most of them under ten. It was
quite like Africa, the homes were all thatched and the
children all naked and the women mostly so. We took lots of
photographs and got on most excellently with the natives who
thought we were as funny as we thought them. Almost every
place we go word has been sent ahead and agents and consuls
and custom house chaps come out to meet me and ask what they
can do. This is very good and keeps Griscom and Somerset in a
proper frame of awe. But seriously I could not ask for better
companions, they are both enormously well informed and polite
and full of fun. The night the Governor asked Somers to
dinner and did not ask us we waited up for him and then hung
him out over the side of the boat above the sharks until he
swore he would never go away from us again. Griscom is more
aggravatingly leisurely but he has a most audacious humor and
talks to the natives in a way that fills them with pleasure
but which nearly makes Somers and I expose the whole party by
laughing. Today we lie here taking in banannas and tomorrow I
will see Conrad, Conrad, Conrad!! Send this to the Consul.
Lots of love.
DICK.
SAN PEDRO — SULA — February, 1895.
[MY DEAR FAMILY:]
The afternoon of the day we were in Puerto Cortez the man
of war Atlanta steamed into the little harbor and we all
cheered and the lottery people ran up the American flag. Then
I and the others went out to her as fast as we could be rowed
and I went over the side and the surprise of the officers was
very great. They called Somers and Griscom to come up and we
spent the day there. They were a much younger and more
amusing lot of fellows than those on the Minneapolis and
treated us most kindly. It was a beautiful boat and each of
us confessed to feeling quite tempted to go back again to
civilization after one day on her. Their boat had touched at
Tangier and so they claimed that she was the one meant in the
Exiles. They told me that the guide Isaac Cohen whom I
mentioned in Harper's Weekly carries it around as an
advertisement and wanted to ship with them as cabin boy. We
left the next day on the railroad and the boys finding that
two negroes sat on the cowcatcher to throw sand on the rails
in slippery places bribed them for their places and I sat on
the sand box. I never took a more beautiful drive. We did
not go faster than an ordinary horse car but still it was
exciting and the views and vistas wonderful. Sometimes we
went for a half mile under arches of cocoanut palms and a
straight broad leafed palm called the manaca that rises in
separate leaves sixty feet from the ground. Imagine a palm
such as we put in pots at weddings and teas as high as Holy
Trinity Church and hundreds and hundreds of them. The country
is very like Cuba but more luxuriant in every way. There are
some trees with marble like trunks
and great branches covered with oriole nests and a hundred
orioles flying in and out of them or else plastered with
orchids. If Billy Furness were to see in what abundance they
grew he would be quite mad. It is a great pity he did not
come with us. This little town is the terminus of the
railroad and we have been here four days while Jeffs the
American Colonel in the Hondurean Army is getting our outfit.
It has been very pleasant and we are in no hurry which is a
good thing for us. It is a most exciting country and as
despotic as all uncivilized and unstable governments must be.
But we have called on the Governor of the district with Jeffs
and he gave us a very fine letter to all civil and unmilitary
authorities in the district calling on them to aid and protect
us in every way. I am getting awfully good material for my
novel and for half a dozen stories to boot only I am surprised
to find how true my novel was to what really exists here.
About ten years ago — — disappeared, having as I thought
drunk himself to death. He came up to me here on my arrival
with a lot of waybills in his hand and I learned that he had
been employed in this hole in the ground by a railroad for two
years. I remembered meeting him at Newport when I was still
at Lehigh, and last night he asked me to dinner and told me
what he had been doing which included everything from acting
in South America to blacking boots in Australia. His boss was
a Pittsburgh engineer who is apparently licking him into shape
and who told me to tell his father that he had stopped
drinking absolutely. His colored "missus" sat with us at the
table and played with a beetle during the three hours I stayed
there during which time he asked me about — — who he said
had
ruined him. He told
me of how — — had done and said this, and the contrast to
the
thatched roof and the mud floor and the Scotch American
engineer and the mulatto girl was rather striking. I never
had more luck in any trip than I have had on this one and the
luck of R. H. D. of which I was fond of boasting seems to hold
good. That man of war, for instance, was the only American
one that had touched at Puerto Cortez in
ten years and it
came the day we did and left the day we did. We saw a big
lithograph of Eddie Sothern in a palm hut here so we went
before a notary and swore to it and had three seals put on the
paper and sent it him as a joke. We start tomorrow the 22nd
so you see we are behind our schedule and I suppose you people
are all worried to death about us. We will be much longer
than six days on our way to Tegucigalpa as we are going
shooting and also to pay our respects to Bogran the
ex-president and the man who is getting up the next
revolution. But we take care to tell everyone we are
travelling for pleasure and are great admirers of Bonilla the
present president. Somers and I are getting on famously. He
is a very fine boy with a great sense of humor and apparently
very fond of me. We had five men counting Jeffs who we call
our military attache and Charwood and four drivers and eleven
mules so it is quite an outfit. In Ecuador with one more man
it would constitute a revolution.
DICK.
[DEAR FAM: SANTA BARBARA — January 25,
1895.]
We are not at Tegucigalpa as you observe but travelling
in this country. "As you see it on Broadway " and as you see
it here are two different things. We have had five days of it
so far and rested here today
in order to pay our respects to General Bogran the
ex-president of the Republic. It is still six days to
Tegucigalpa. The trip across Central America will certainly
be one of the most interesting experiences of my life. It is
the most beautiful country I have seen and the most barbarous.
It is also the hottest and the most insect-ious and the
dirtiest. This latter seems a little view to take of it but
it means a great deal as the insects prevent your doing
anything in a natural way; as for instance sitting on the
grass or sleeping on the ground or hunting through the bushes.
It is pretty much as you imagine it is from what you have
read, that covers it, and I have discovered nothing new by
coming to see it. I only verify what others have seen. The
people are most uninteresting chiefly because they are surly
to Americans and do not make you feel welcome. I do not mean
that I did not do well to come for I am more glad that I did
than I can say only I have not, as I have been able to do
before, found something that others have not seen. I never
expect to see such a country again unless in Africa. If you
leave the path for ten yards you would never get back to it
except by accident and you could not get that far away unless
you cut yourself a trail. In some places the mail route which
we follow and over which the mail is carried on the backs of
runners is cut in the rock and we go down steps as even as
those of the City Hall and for hours we travel over rough
rocks and stones and a path so narrow that your knees catch in
the vines at the side. The mules are wonderfully sure footed
and never slip although they are very little, and I am pretty
heavy. The heat is something awful. It bakes you and will
dry your pith helmet in ten minutes after you have soaked it
in water. But the scenery
is magnificent, sometimes we ride above the clouds and look
down into valleys stretching fifty miles away and see the
buzzards half a mile below us. Then we go through forests of
manaca palms that spread out on a single stem sideways and
form arches over our heads with the leaves hanging in front of
us like portiers or we cross great plains of grass and cactus
and rock. The best fun is the baths we take in the mountain
streams. They are almost as cool as one could wish and we
shoot the rapids and lie under the waterfalls and come out
with all the soreness rubbed out of us as though we had been
massaged. We went shooting for two days but as they had no
dogs we did not do much. I got the best shot of the trip and
missed it. It was a large wild cat and he turned his side full
on but I fired over him. Somers and I spent most of the time
firing chance shots at alligators, but they never gave us a
good chance as the birds warn them when they are in danger.
One old fellow fifteen feet long beat us for some time and
then Somers and I started across the river to catch him
asleep. It was like the taking of Lungtepen. We had our
money belts around our necks and our shoes in one hand and
rifles in the other. The rapids ran very fast and the last I
saw of Somerset he was sitting on the bank he had started from
counting out wet bank notes and blowing the water out of his
gun barrel. I got across all right by sticking my feet
between rocks and put on my shoes and crawled up on the old
Johnnie. He smelt of musk so strong that you could have found
him in the dark. I had, a beautiful shot at him at fifty
yards but I was too greedy and ran around some rocks to get
nearer and he heard me and dived. I shot a macaw, one of
those overgrown parrots with tail feathers three feet from tip
to tip. I got him with a
rifle and as Griscom had got his with a shotgun I came out all
right as a marksman although I was very sore at missing the
wild cat. We sleep in hats and we sleep precious little for
the dogs and pigs and insects all help to keep us awake and I
cannot get used to a hammock. The native beds are made of
matting such as they put over tea chests, or bull's hide
stretched. Last night I slept in a hut with a woman and her
three daughters all over fifteen and they sat up and watched
me prepare for bed with great interest. I would not have
missed this trip for any other I know. I wanted to rough it
and we've roughed it and we will have another week of it too.
We have some remarkable photographs and the article ought to
be most interesting. Bogran proved to be a very handsome and
remarkable man and we had a very interesting talk with him.
>From Tegucigalpa we will probably go directly to Venezuela
across the Isthmus of Panama and not visit another Republic.
We have all travelled too much to care to duplicate, and that
is what we would be doing by remaining longer in Central
America. A month of it will be enough of it and we will not
get away from Amapala before the first of February. We are
all well and happy and dirty and sing and laugh and tell
stories and listen to Griscom's anecdotes of the aristocracy
as we pick our way along. So goodbye and God bless you all.
DICK.
TEGUCIGALPA, CENTRAL AMERICA.
February lst, 1895.
and 4th, 1895.
[DEAR FAMILY — ]
Here we are at last, the trip from Santa Barbara where I
last wrote you was made in six days. It was not so
interesting as the first part because it was very
high up and the tropical scenery gave way to immensely tall
pines and other trees that might have been in California, or
the Rockies. The Corderillas which is the name of the
mountains we crossed are a continuation, by the way, of the
Rockies, and the Andes but are not more than 4,000 feet high.
We had two very hot days of it in the plains of Comgaqua where
there was once a city of 60,000 founded by Cortez but where
there are not now more than 6,000. The heat was awful. We
peeled all over our faces and hands and dodged and ducked our
heads as though some one were biting at us. My saddle and
clothes were so hot that I could not place my hand on them.
At one village we heard that a bull fight was to be given at
the next fifteen miles away, so we rode on there and arrived
in time to take part. They had enclosed the plaza with a
barricade of logs seven feet high, bound together with vines.
They roped a big bull and lassoed him all over and then a man
got on his back with spurs on his bare feet and held on by the
ropes around the bull's body and by his toes and threw a cloak
over the bull's eyes when ever it got too near any one — They
stuck it with spears until it was mad and then let the lassoes
slip and the bull started off to tear out the torreadors. I
thought it would be a great sporting act to kodak a bull while
it was charging you and so we all volunteered to act as
torreadors and it was most exciting and funny. It was rather
late to get good results but I got some pretty good pictures
of the bull coming at me with his head down and then I'd skip
into a hole in the wall. The best pictures I got were of
Somers and Griscom scrambling over the seven foot barriers
with the bull in hot chase. We all looked so funny in our
high boots
and helmets and so much alike that the savages yelled with
delight and thought we had been engaged especially for their
pleasure. Our "mosers," or mule drivers treated us most
insolently but we could not do anything because Jeffs. had
engaged them and we did not want to interfere with his
authority but at a place the last day out one of them told
Jeffs he lied and that we all lied. He had lost or stolen a
canteen of Griscom's and they had said we had not given it to
him. Jeffs. went at him right and left and knocked him all
over the shop. There were half a dozen drunken mule drivers
at the place and we thought they would take a hand but they
did not. That night Jeffs. thought to try us to see what we
would have done and left us bathing in a mountain stream and
rode on ahead and hid himself behind a rock in a canon and lay
in ambush for us. We were jogging along in the moonlight and
Somerset was reciting the "Walrus and the Carpenter," when
suddenly Jeffs. let out a series of yells in Spanish and
opened fire on us over our heads. Somerset was riding my mule
and I had no weapons, so I yelled at him to shoot and he fell
off his mule and ran to mine and let go at the rock behind
which Jeffs. was with the carbines. So that in about five
seconds Jeffs.' curiosity was perfectly satisfied as to what
we would do, and he shouted for mercy. We thought it was a
sentry or brigands and were greatly disappointed when it
turned out to be Jeffs. We got here last night and a dirtier
or more dismal place you never saw. We had telegraphed ahead
for rooms but nothing was in order and we were lodged much
worse than we had been several times in the interior where
there was occasionally a clean floor. This morning we wrote
direct to the President, asking for an interview
or audience and did not ask our Consul to help us because
Jeffs. had asked him in our presence to come meet us and he
said he would after he had done talking to some other men, but
he never came. Before we heard from Bonilla however, we
learned that the Vice-president who has the same name was to
be sworn in so we went to the palace along with the populace
in their bare feet. We sat out of sight but the English
Consul who was the finest looking person in the chamber — all
over gold lace — saw us and asked that we be given places in
front, which the minister of something asked us to take but we
objected on account of our clothes. Somers had on a flannel
suit that looked exactly like pajamas and lawn tennis shoes.
But as soon as the ceremony was over they insisted on our
going in to the banquet hall and in spite of our objections we
were there conveyed and presented to Bonilla who behaved very
well and after saying he had received our letters but had not
had time to read them left us and avoided us, which was what
we wanted for we looked like the devil. We met everybody else
though and took the English and Guatemalian Consuls back to
our rooms and gave them drinks and then we went to their
rooms, so the day went very pleasantly. The President sent us
a funny printed card appointing an audience at eleven
to-morrow. It is exactly what you would imagine it would be,
the soldiers are barefooted except about fifty and the
President leaned out of the window in his shirt sleeves after
the review and they have not plastered up the holes in his
palace that his cannon made in it just a year ago to-day, when
he was fighting Vasquez, and Vasquez was then on the inside
and Bonilla on the hills. I forgot to tell you
that this morning a boy about sixteen years old, with a
policeman's badge and club came to our window and talked
pleasantly with us or at us rather, while we shaved and guyed
him in English. Finally we found that he had come to arrest
Jeffs. so we told him where Jeffs. was but he preferred to
watch us shave and we finished it under his custody. Then we
went to the Commandante and found that the mosers had had
Jeffs. arrested for not paying them on their arrival at
Tegucigalpa, as we had distinctly told them we would not do
but at San Pedro from where we took them, on their return. It
was only a spite case suggested by Jeffs. thrashing their
leader. The Commandante gave them a scolding and we went out
in triumph.
February 4th —
Your cable received all right. We were very glad to
hear. We have decided to go on by mules to Manaqua, the
Capital of Nicaragua, and from there either to Corinto or to
Lemon on the Atlantic side. We had to do this or wait here
ten days for the boat going south at Amapala. It is moonlight
now so that we can avoid the heat of the day. Yesterday we
went out riding with the President, who put a gold revolver in
his hip pocket before he started and made us feel that uneasy
lies the head that rules in this country. He had two horses
that had never been ridden before, as a compliment to our
powers, the result was that the Vice-president's horse almost
killed him, which I guess the President intended it should and
the horse Griscom rode backed all over the town. He was a
stallion and had never been ridden before that day. Mine was
a gentle old gee-gee and yet I felt good when
we were all on the ground again. The British consul gave
Somers a fine reception and raised the flag for him and had
the band there to play "God Save the Queen," which he had
spent the whole morning in teaching them. Griscom and I
called on our Consul and played his guitar. We bought one for
ourselves for the rest of the trip.
I want you to do something for me: keep all the
unfavorable notices you get. I know Mother won't do it, so I
shall expect Nora to make a point of saving them from the
waste-paper basket. If there is not a lot of them when I get
back, I will raise a row.
DICK.
MANAQUA-NICARAGUA-February 13, 1895.
[DEAR FAM:]
I had a great deal to tell you, but we have just received
copies of the Panama Star and have read of the trolley
riots
in Brooklyn, a crisis in France, War in the Balkans, a
revolution in Honolulu and another in Colombia. The result is
that we feel we are not in it and we are all kicking and
growling and abusing our luck. How Claiborne and Russell will
delight over us and in telling how the militia fired on the
strikers and how Troop A fought nobly. Never mind our turn
will come someday and we may see something yet. We have had
the deuce of a time since we left Tegucigalpa. Now we are in
a land where there are bull hide beds and canvas cots instead
of hammocks and ice and railroads and direct communication
with steamship lines. Hereafter all will be merely a matter
of waiting until the boat sails or the train starts and the
uncertainties of mules and cat boats are at an end. It is
hard to explain about our difficulties
after we left Tegucigalpa but they were many. We
gave up our idea of riding here direct because they assured us
we could get a steam launch from Amapala to Corinto so we rode
three days to San Lorenzo on the Pacific side and took an open
boat from there to Amapala. It was rowed by four men who
walked up a notched log and then fell back dragging the sweeps
back, with the weight of their bodies.
It was a moonlight night and they looked very picturesque
rising and sinking back and outlined against the sky. They
were naked to the waist and rowed all night and I had a good
chance to see them as I had to lie on the bottom of the boat
on three mahogany logs. By ten the next day we were too
cramped to stand it, so we put ashore on a deserted island and
played Robinson Crusoe. We had two biscuits and a box of
sardines among five of us but we found oysters on the rocks
and knocked a lot off with clubs and stones and the butts of
our guns. They were very good. We also had a bath until a
fish ran into me about three feet long and cut two gashes in
my leg. We reached Amapala about four in the afternoon. It
was an awful place; dirt and filth and no room to move about,
so we chartered an open boat to sail or row to Corinto sixty
miles distant. You see, we could not go back to Tegucigalpa
until the steamer arrived which is to take us South of Panama
and we could not go to Manaqua either and for the same reason
that we had sent back our mule train and we would not wait in
Amapala partly because of fever which had been there and
partly because we wanted to get to Corinto where they have ice
and to see Manaqua. The boat was about as long as the
Vagabond and twice
as deep and a foot or two more across her beam. There were
four of us, five of the crew and two natives who wanted to
make the trip and who we took with us. It was pretty awful.
The old tub rocked like a milk shake and I was never so ill in
my life, we all lay packed together on the ribs of the boat
and could not move and the waves splashed over us but we were
too ill to care. The next day the sun beat in on us and
roasted us like an open furnace. The boat was a pit of heat
and outside the swell of the Pacific rose and fell and
reflected the sun like copper. We reached Corinto in about
twenty four hours and I was never so glad to get any place
before. The town turned out to greet us and some Englishmen
ran to ask from what boat we had been ship wrecked. They
would not believe we had taken the trip for any other reason.
They helped us very kindly and would not let us drink all the
iced water we wanted and sent us in to bathe in a place
surrounded by piles to keep out the sharks and by a roof to
shelter one from the sun. Corinto proved to be all that
Amapala was not; clean, cool with very excellent food and
broad beds of matting. I liked it better than any place at
which we have been, we came on here the next day to see the
President and found the city hot, dusty and of no interest.
There is an excellent hotel however and we had a talk with the
President who was a much better chap than Bonilla being older
and more civilized. Of course there is absolutely no reason
or excuse for us if we do not get control of this canal. If
only that it would allow our ships of war to pass from Ocean
to Ocean instead of going around the horn. The women are
really beautiful but that has nothing to do with the canal.
Tomorrow morning we return to Corinto as Somers and
I like it best. Griscom would like to go on across by the
route of the canal which would be a good thing were we certain
of meeting a steamer at Simon or Greytown, but the Minister
who went last month that way had to wait there sixteen days.
So, we will probably leave Corinto on the 17th or 20th, there
are two steamers, one that stops at ports and one that does
not. They both arrive together. I do not know which we will
take but — this letter will go with me. Up to date I think the
trip will make a good story but it will have to be a personal
one about the three of us for the country as it stands is
uninteresting to the general reader for the reason that it
duplicates itself in everything. But with our photographs
and a humorous story, it ought to be worth reading and I have
picked enough curious things to make it of some value.
February 15, — Corinto.
We are back here now and rid of that dusty, dirty city.
You would be amused if you saw this place and tried to
understand why we prefer it to any place we have seen. There
is surf bathing at a half mile distant and a good hotel with a
great bar where a Frenchman gives us ice and the sea captains
and agents for mines and plantations in the interior gather to
play billiards. Outside there are rows of handsome women with
decollete gowns and shining black hair and colored silk scarfs
selling fruit and down the one street which faces the bay are
a double row of palms and the store where two American boys
have a phonograph. They are the only Americans I have met who
have or are taking a dollar out of this country. They play
the guitar and banjo very well. One of them was on the
Princeton glee club and their stories of how they have toured
Central America are very amusing. Lots of Love.
DICK.
S. S. Barracouta — Off San Juan
February 21, 1895.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
Today I believe is the 21st. We are out two days from
Corinto off San Juan on the boundary of Costa Rica and lie
here some hours. Then we go on without stopping to Panama
arriving there about the 25th. On the 28th we take the
steamer to Caracas. We will be at Caracas a week and then go
straight home. But in the meanwhile we will have got one mail
at Colon when we go there to take the boat for Caracas and
glad I will be to get it. We have had a summary of the news
in the Panama Star and a bundle of Worlds telling
all
about the trolley strike and that is all except Dad's cable at
Tegucigalpa that we have heard in nearly two months. I am very
sorry that the distances have turned out so much longer than
we expected and that we had that unfortunate ten days wait for
the steamer. I know you want me home and I would like to be
there but I do not think I ought to go without seeing Caracas.
It helps the book so much too if one runs it into South
America for no one in the States thinks much of Central and
does not want to read about it. At least I know I never did.
We have had a most amusing time with the two phonograph chaps.
One of them has been an advertising agent and a deputy sheriff
and chased stage coach robbers and kept a hard ware store and
is only twenty-five and the other has not had quite as much
experience but has been to Princeton, he is
23. The mixture of narratives which change from tricks of the
hard-ware trade to dances at Buckingham Palace and anecdotes
of Cliff House supper parties at San Francisco are very
interesting. I am going to write a book for them and call it
"Through Central America with a Phonograph" or "Who We Did,
and How We Done Them." We sing the most beautiful medleys and
contribute to the phonograph. I had to protest against them
announcing "Her Golden Hair was Hanging Down her Back" by
Richard Harding Davis and Somerset kicked at their introducing
"God Save the Queen" as sung by "His Grace the Duke of
Bedford" which they insist in thinking his real title and his
name; if he would only confess the truth. You cannot have any
idea of how glad I am that I took this trip, just this
particular trip, not for any interest it will be to the gentle
reader but for the benefit it has been to me. All the things
I was nervous about have been done and should I get nerves
again as I suppose I always will in one form or another I can
get rid of them by remembering how I got rid of them before
during this most peculiar excursion. For though I and we all
told the truth about being well, we were in a most trying
place at times and the ride we took and the sail to get away
from possible fever was very much of a strain. I do not see
how Griscom kept up as he did for he was an invalid and very
nervous when he started. But he showed great sporting blood.
It was much better having three than two and he furnished us
with much amusement at which he never complains. His
artlessness and his bad breaks which keep us filled with
terror make the most entertaining narratives and he tells them
on himself and then keeps on making new ones. One night Jeffs
came down with
fever through bathing in the mountain streams, a practice
which did not hurt us but which natives of the country cannot
do in safety, and I confess I was scared. Jeffs pulled
through in a few days. It was odd that the man who had lived
here eleven years should have been the only one to give up
throughout the whole trip and he was a good sport, too.
I will have the Central American stories all done or
nearly so by the time we reach New York which is one of the
comforts of this over abundance of sea voyages. I have the
lottery story nearly written and am wondering now if Bissell
will let me publish it. Would it not be a good idea to have
Dad, if he knows him, explain about how I went South to write
it and just what it is and get his official sanction or shall
I write or get the Harper's to write when I get back. The
lottery people in joke offered $10,000 if they could write
the story themselves. And sometimes I wish they would for it
is the hardest kind of work. I do not want to advertise their
old game and yet I cannot help doing it, in a way. We put in
at Punta Arenas and I found a woman looking at us with an
opera glass and shortly after she sent out to say she knew me
and that she wanted me to come up. It seemed I met her in
Elizabeth, New Jersey with Eddie Coward where she was playing
in private theatricals. Since then as a punishment no doubt
she has lived here and her husband is Minister of the Navy
with one gun boat. This trip is very hot and I sleep on deck
and look up at the stars and the light on the jib and the
smoke spoiling the firmament. It makes you feel terribly far
away from the centre of civilization in front of the fire and
you all trying to make out where we are at. I hope you know
more about it than we do,
It is the worst country for getting about that I ever heard
of. It has revived my interest and belief in all such
beautiful things as buried treasures and hidden cities and
shooting men against stone walls and filibusters. There are
not many of these stories but every man tells them differently
so they have all the freshness of a new tale. There is no ice
on this boat or lemons or segars. It is the first time so
they say that it has happened in twelve months, but after this
it must be better. At Panama they fine the ice man $1000
every day his machine breaks and so we have hopes. I feel so
very, very selfish off down here and leaving you all alone and
it makes me lose my temper more than usual when all these
delays occur but I promise to be good hereafter and we will be
together soon now by the end of March sure and I hope you will
not miss me too much, as much as I miss all of you. Sometimes
I wish you could see some of these islands and the long
shadowy sharks and the turtles, there are thousands of turtles
as big as tubs just floating around like empty bottles, but I
have never on the whole taken a trip when I so seldom wished
that the family were around to enjoy it. It used to hurt me
during the Mediterranean trip but there is not much that would
please you in this outfit. I like it because I am satisfied
to go dirty for weeks at a time and to talk to the engineer or
the queer passengers and to pick up stories and improve my
geography but I do not think the scenery would compensate
either Nora or you or Dad for the lack of necessities and
cleanth. When we were crossing the continent I don't
believe I had a spot on me as big as a nickel without three
bites on it, all sorts of bites, they just swarmed over you
all sizes, colors and varieties. They came
from dogs, from the sand, from trees, from the grass, from the
air. The worst were little red bugs that lay under the leaves
called carrapati's and that came off on you in a hundred at a
time. And there were also "jiggers" that get under your nails
and leave eggs there. Some times we could not sleep at all
for the bites and you had to carry a brush to brush the
carripats off every time you passed through bushes. It's the
damnedest country I was ever in now that I have time to think
of it. The other day I was going in to bathe and the sand was
so hot that I could not get to the breakers and so I went
yelling and jumping back to the grass and the grass was just
one mass of burrs, so I gave another yell and leaped on to a
big log and the log was full of thorns. That's the sort of
country it is. And then after you do make a dash for the surf
a shark makes a dash for you and you don't know what you are
here for anyway. It had its humorous side and it was very
funny, especially as it never turned out otherwise, to see the
men scamper when the sharks came in. They never scented us
for ten minutes or so and then they would swim up and we would
give a yell and all make for the shore head over heels and
splashing and shrieking and scared and excited. There would
always be one man who was further out than the rest and he
could not hear on account of the waves and we would all line
up on the beach and yell and dance up and down and try to
attract his attention. But you would see him go on diving and
playing along in horrible loneliness until he turned to speak
to some one and found the man gone and then he would look for
the others and when he saw us all on the shore he would give
one wild whoop out of him and go falling over himself with his
hair on end and his eyes and mouth wide open. I saw one shark
ten feet long but we would have died of the heat if we had not
bathed so we thought it was worth it. That's over now because
we cannot get any more sea bathing. Just around Panama.
Finest
place seen yet.
RICHARD.
PANAMA, February 28th, 1895.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
Griscom has awakened to the fact that he is a Press
correspondent and is interviewing rebels who come stealthily
by night followed by spies of the government and sit in
Griscom's room with the son of the Consul General, as
interpreter. Somerset and I refuse to be implicated and sit
in the plaza waiting for a file of soldiers to carry Griscom
off which is our cue for action. There is a man-of-war, the
Atlanta, the one we made friends with at Puerto Cortez,
lying at Colon and so we feel safe. We may now be said to be
absorbing local color. That is about all we have done since
we left Amapala. And if it were not that you are all alone up
there, I would not mind it. I would probably continue on. We
know it now as we do London or Paris. We can distinguish sea
captains, lawyers in politics, commandantes, oldest residents,
gentlemenly good for nothings, shipping agents and commission
dealers, coffee planters and men who are "on the beach" with
unerring eye. We know the story of each before he tells it,
or it is told by some one else. The Commandante shot a lot of
men by the side of a road during the last revolution, first
allowing them to dig their own graves and is here now so that
he can pay himself by stealing the custom dues,
the lawyer politician has been to Cornell and taken a medical
degree in Paris and aspires to be a deputy and only remembers
New York as the home of Lillian Russell. The commission
merchants are all Germans and the coffee planters are all
French. They point with pride to little bare-foot boys
selling sea shells and cocoanuts as their offspring, although
they cannot remember their names. The sea captains you can
tell by their ready made clothes of a material that would be
warm in Alaska and by them wearing Spanish dollars for watch
guards and by the walk which is rolling easily when sober and
pitching heavily toward the night. The oldest resident always
sits in front of the hotel and in the same seat, with a
tortoise shell cane and remembers when Vasquez or Mendoza or
Barrios, or Bonilla occupied the Cathedral and fired hot shot
into the Palace and everybody took refuge in the English
Consulate and he helped guard the bank all night with a
Springfield rifle. The men who are on the beach have just
come out of the hospital where they have had yellow fever and
they want food. This story is intended to induce you to get
rid of them hurriedly by a small token. Sometimes out of this
queer combination you will get a good story but generally they
want to show you a ruined abbey or a document as old as the
Spanish occupation or to make you acquainted with a man who
has pearls to sell, or a coffee plantation or a collection of
unused stamps which he stole while a post-office employee.
Our chief sport now is to go throw money at the prisoners who
are locked up in a row of dungeons underneath the sea wall.
The people walk and flirt and enjoy the sea breeze above them
and the convicts by holding a mirror between the bars of the
dungeons can see
who is leaning over the parapet above them. Then they hold
out their hands and you drop nickels and they fail to catch
them and the sentry comes up and teases them by holding the
money a few inches beyond their reach. They climb all over
the crossbars in their anxiety to get the money and look like
great monkeys. At night it is perfectly tremendous for their
is only a light over their heads and they crawl all over the
bars beneath this, standing on each other's shoulders and
pushing and fighting and yelling half naked and wholey black
and covered with sweat. As a matter of fact they are better
content to stay in jail than out and when the British Consul
offered to send eight of them back to Jamaica they refused to
go and said they would rather serve out their sentence of
eight years. This is the way the place looks and I am going
to introduce it in a melodrama and have some one lower files
down to the prisoners.
DICK.
After some not very eventful or pleasant days at Caracas,
Richard sailed for home and from the steamer wrote the
following letter:
March 26th — On board S. S.
Caracas.
[DEAR CHAS:]
Off the coast of God's country. Hurrah! H — — did
not
come near us until the morning of our departure when he
arrived at the Station trembling all over and in need of a
shave. But in the meanwhile the consul at Caracas picked
Griscom and myself up in the street and took us in to see
Crespo who received us with much dignity and politeness. So
we met him after all and helped the story out that much.
There is not much more to tell except that I was never so
glad to set my face home as I am now and even the roughness of
this trip cannot squelch my joy. It seems to me as if years
had passed since we left and to think we are only three days
off from Sandy Hook seems much too wonderfully good to be
possible. Some day when we have dined alone together at
Laurent's I will tell you the long story of how Somers and Gris
came to be decorated with the Order of the Bust of Bolivar the
Liberator of Venezuela of the 4th class but at present I will
only say that there is a third class of the order still coming
to me in Caracas, as there is 20 minutes still coming to Kelly
in Brooklyn. It was a matter of either my getting the third
class, which I ought to have had anyway having the third class
of another order already, and their getting nothing, or
our
all getting the 4th or 5th class and of course I choose that
they should get something and so they did and for my aimable
unselfishness in the matter they have frequently drunken my
health. I was delighted when Somers got his for he was
happier over it than I have ever seen him over anything and
kept me awake nights talking about it. I consider it the
handsomest order there is after the Legion of Honor and I have
become so crazy about Bolivar who was a second Washington and
Napoleon that I am very glad to have it, although I still sigh
for the third class with its star and collar.
The boys are especially glad because we have organized a
Traveller's Club of New York of which we expect great things
and they consider that it starts off well in having three of
the members possessors of a foreign order. We formed the club
while crossing Honduras in sight of the Pacific Ocean and its
object is to give each other dinners and to present a club
medal to people who have been nice to and who have
helped members of the club while they were in foreign parts.
It is my idea and I think a good one as there are lots of
things one wants to do for people who help you and this will
be as good as any. Members of the club are the only persons
not eligible to any medal bestowed by the club and the
eligibility for membership is determined by certain distances
which a man must have travelled. Although the idea really is
to keep it right down to our own crowd and make each man
justify the smallness of the club's membership by doing
something worth while. I am President. Bonsal is vice
president. Russell treasurer and Griscom Secretary. Somerset
is the solitary member. You and Sam and Helen and Elizabeth
Bisland are at present the only honorary members. We are also
giving gold medals to the two chaps who crossed Asia on
bicycles, to Willie Chanler and James Creelman, but that does
not make them members. It only shows we as a club think they
have done a sporting act. I hope you like the idea. We have
gone over it for a month and considered it in every way and I
think we are all well enough known to make anybody pleased to
have us recognize what they did whether it was for any of us
personally or for the public as explorers. On this trip for
instance we would probably send the club medals in silver to
Admiral Meade, to Kelly, to Royas the Venezuelan Minister for
the orders to the Governor of Belize, to the consul at La
Guayra and to one of the phonograph chaps. In the same way if
you would want to send a medal to any man or woman prince or
doctor who had been kind, courteous, hospitable or of official
service to you you would just send in a request to the
committee. Write me soon and with lots of love
DICK.
In April, 1895, Richard was back in New York, at work on
his South and Central American articles, and according to the
following letters, having a good time with his old friends.
NEW YORK, April 27, 1895.
[DEAR CHAS:]
I read in the paper the other morning that John Drew was
in Harlem, so I sent him a telegram saying that I was
organizing a relief expedition, and would bring him out of the
wilderness in safety. At twelve I sent another reading,
"Natives from interior of Harlem report having seen Davis
Relief Expeditionary Force crossing Central Park, all well.
Robert Howard Russell." At two I got hold of Russell, and we
telegraphed "Relief reached Eighty-fifth street; natives
peacefully inclined, awaiting rear column, led by Griscom;
save your ammunition and provisions." Just before the curtain
fell we sent another, reading: "If you can hold the audience
at bay for another hour, we guarantee to rescue yourself and
company and bring you all back to the coast in safety. Do not
become disheartened." Then we started for Harlem in a cab
with George and another colored man dressed as African
warriors, with assegai daggers and robes of gold and high
turbans and sashes stuck full of swords. I wore my sombrero
and riding breeches, gauntlets and riding boots, with
cartridge belts full of bum cartridges over my shoulder and
around the waist. Russell had my pith helmet and a suit of
khaki and leggins. Griscom was in one of my coats of many
pockets, a helmet and boots. We all carried revolvers,
canteens and rifles. We sent George in with a note saying we
were outside the zareba and could not rescue him because the
man
on watch objected to our guns. As soon as they saw George
they rushed out and brought us all in. Drew was on the stage,
so we tramped into the first entrance, followed by all the
grips, stage hands and members of the company. The old man
heard his cue just as I embraced him, and was so rattled that
when he got on the stage he could not say anything, and the
curtain went down without any one knowing what the plot was
about. When John came off, I walked up to him, followed by
the other four and the entire company, and said: "Mr. Drew, I
presume," and he said: "Mr. Davis, I believe. I am saved!"
Helen Benedict happened to be in Maude Adams' dressing-room,
and went off into a fit, and the company was delighted as John
would have been had he been quite sure we were not going on
the stage or into a box. We left them after we had had a
drink, although the company besought us to stay and protect
them, and got a supper ready in Russell's rooms, at which
Helen, Ethel Barrymore, John and Mrs. Drew, Maude Adams and
Griscom were present.
DICK.
NEW YORK, November, 1895.
[DEAR MOTHER: — ]
The china cups have arrived all right and are a beautiful
addition to my collection and to my room, in which Daphne
still holds first place.
What do you think Sir Henry sent me? The medal and his
little black pipe in a green velvet box about as big as two
bricks laid side by side with a heavy glass top with bevelled
edges and the medal and pipe lying on a white satin bed, bound
down with silver — and a large gold plate with the inscription
"To Richard Harding Davis with the warmest greetings from
Gregory
Brewster — 1895" — You have no idea how pretty it is,
Bailey, Banks and Biddle made it — It is just like him to do
anything so sweet and thoughtful and it has attracted so many
people that I have had it locked up — No Burden jewel robbers
here — My friend, the Russian O — — lady still pursues me
and
as she has no sense of humor and takes everything seriously,
she frightens me — I am afraid she will move in at any
moment — She has asked me to spend the summer with her at
Paris and Monte Carlo, and at her country place in Norfolk and
bombards me with invitations to suppers and things in the
meantime. She has just sent me a picture of herself two feet
by three, with writing all over it and at any moment, I expect
her to ring the bell and order her trunks taken up stairs — I
am too attractive — Last night I dined with Helen and Maude
Adams, who is staying with her. I want them to board me too.
Maude sang for us after dinner and then went off to see Yvette
Guilbert at a "sacred concert" to study her methods. I went
to N — — 's box to hear Melba and we chatted to the
accompaniment of Melba, Nordica and Plancon in a trio — the
Ogre, wore fur, pearls, white satin and violets. It was a
pink silk box. Then I went down to a reception at Mrs. De
Koven's and found it was a play. Everybody was seated already
so I squatted down on the floor in front of Mrs. De Koven and
a tall woman in a brocade gown cut like a Japanese woman's —
It was very dark where the audience was, so I could not see
her face but when the pantomime was over I looked up and saw
it was Yvette Guilbert. So I grabbed Mrs. De Koven and told
her to present me and Guilbert said in English — "It is not
comfortable on the floor is it?" and I said, "I have been at
your feet for three years now, so I am quite
used to it" — for which I was much applauded — Afterwards I
told some one to tell her in French that I had written a book
about Paris and about her and that I was going to mark it and
send it and before the woman could translate, Guilbert said,
"No, send me the Van Bippere book" — So we asked her what she
meant and she said, " M. Bourget told me to meet you and to
read your Van Bippere Book, you are Mr. Davis, are you not?" —
So after that I owned the place and refused to meet Mrs.
Vanderbilt.
Yvette has offered to teach me French, so I guess I won't
go to Somerset's wedding, unless O — — scares me out of the
country. I got my $2,000 check and have paid all my debts.
They were not a third as much as I thought they were, so
that's all right.
Do come over mother, as soon as you can and we will meet
at Jersey City, and have a nice lunch and a good talk. Give
my bestest love to Dad and Nora. How would she like Yvette
for a sister-in-law? John Hare has sent me seats for to
night — He is very nice — I have begun the story of the."
Servants' Ball" and got well into it.
Lots and lots of love.
DICK.
The following letter was written to me at Florence. The
novel referred to was "Soldiers of Fortune," which eventually
proved the most successful book, commercially, my brother ever
wrote. Mrs. Hicks, to whom Richard frequently refers, is the
well-known English actress Ellaline Terriss, the wife of
Seymour Hicks. Somerset is Somers Somerset, the son of Lady
Henry Somerset, and the Frohman referred to is Daniel Frohman,
who was the manager of the old Lyceum Theatre.
Early in November, William R. Hearst asked my brother to
write a description of the Yale-Princeton football game for
The Journal. Richard did not want to write the "story"
and
by way of a polite refusal said he could not undertake it for
less than $500.00. Greatly to his surprise Hearst promptly
accepted the offer. At the time, I imagine this was by far
the largest sum ever paid a writer for reporting a single
event.
December 31st, 1895.
New York.
The Players.
New Year's Eve.
[DEAR CHAS:]
I am not much of a letter writer these days, but I have
finished the novel and that must make up for it. It goes to
the Scribners for $5,000 which is not as much as I think I
should have got for it. I am now lying around here until the
first of February, when I expect to sail to Somerset's
wedding, reaching you in little old Firenzi in March. We will
then paint it. After that I do not know what I shall do.
The Journal is after me to do almost anything I want at my
own figure, as a correspondent. They have made Ralph London
correspondent and their paper is the only one now to stick to.
They are trying to get all the well known men at big prices.
I have had such a good time helping Mrs. Hicks in
Seymour's absence. She had about everything happen to her
that is possible and she is just the sort of little person you
love to do things for. She finally sailed and I am now able
to attend to my own family.
The Central American and Venezuelan book comes out on
February lst. Several of the papers here jokingly alluded to
the fact that my article on the Venezuelan
boundary had inspired the President's message. Of
course you get garbled ideas of things over there and
exaggerated ones, as for instance, on the Coxey army. But you
never saw anything like the country after that war message.
It was like living with a British fleet off Sandy Hook.
Everybody talked of it and of nothing else. I went to a
dinner of 300 men all of different callings and I do not
believe one of them spoke of anything else. Cabmen, car
conductors, barkeepers, beggars and policemen. All talked war
and Venezuela and the Doctrine of Mr. Monroe. In three days
the country lost one thousand of millions of dollars in
values, which gives you an idea how expensive war is. It is
worse than running a newspaper. Now, almost everyone is for
peace, peace at any price. I do not know of but one jingo
paper,
The Sun, and war talk is greeted with jeers. It
was
as if the people had suddenly had their eyes opened to what it
really meant and having seen were wiser and wanted no more of
it. Your brother, personally, looks at it like this.
Salisbury was to blame in the first place for being rude and
not offering to arbitrate as he had been asked to do. When he
said to Cleveland, "It's none of your business" the only
answer was "Well, I'll make it my business" but instead of
stopping there, Cleveland uttered a cast iron ultimatum
instead of leaving a loophole for diplomacy and a chance for
either or both to back out. That's where I blame him as does
every one else.
Sam Sothern is in Chicago and we all wrote him guying
letters about the war. Helen said she was going to engage
"The Heart of Maryland" company to protect her front yard,
while Russell and I have engaged "The Girl I Left Behind Me"
company with Blanch Walsh and the original cast.
We sent Somerset a picture of himself riddled with
bullets. And Mrs. Hicks made herself famous by asking if it
was that odious Dunraven they were going to war about.
My article was a very lucky thing and is greatly quoted
and in social gatherings I am appealed to as a final
authority.
The football story, by the way, did me a heap of good
with the newspapers and the price was quoted as the highest
ever paid for a piece of reporting. People sent for it so
that the edition was exhausted. The Journal people were
greatly pleased.
Yvette Guilbert is at Hammerstein's and crowds the new
music hall nightly, at two dollars a seat. Irving and Miss
Terry have been most friendly to me and to the family.
Frohman is going to put "Zenda" on in New York because he has
played a failure, which will of course kill it for next year
for Eddie, when he comes out as a star. I have never seen
such general indignation over a private affair. Barrymore
called it a case of Ollaga Zenda. They even went to Brooklyn
when Eddie was playing there and asked him to stage the play
for them and how he made his changes and put on his whiskers.
Poor Eddie, he lacks a business head and a business
manager — and Sam talks and shakes his head but is little
better. Lots of love and best wishes for the New Year.
DICK.
