X. CAMPAIGNING IN CUBA AND GREECE
In December, 1896, Richard and Frederic Remington, the
artist, were commissioned by the New York Journal to visit
Cuba which was then at war with Spain. It was their intention
to go from Key West in the Vamoose, a very fast but frail
steam-launch, and to make a landing at some uninhabited point
on the Cuban coast. After this their plans seem to have been
to trust to luck and the kindliness of the revolutionists.
After waiting for some time at Key West for favorable weather,
they at last started out on a dark night to make the crossing.
A few hours after the Vamoose had left Key West a heavy
storm arose — apparently much too violent for the slightly
built launch. The crew struck and the captain finally refused
to go on to Cuba and put back to Key West. Shortly after this
Remington and my brother reached Havana by a more simple and
ostentatious route. This was my brother's first effort as a
war correspondent, and I presume it was this fact and the very
indefiniteness of the original plan that caused his mother and
father so much uneasiness. And, indeed, it did prove
eventually a hazardous exploit.
On way to Key West.
December 19, 1896.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
I hope you won't be cross with me for going off and not
letting you know, but I thought it was better
to do it that way as there was such delay in our getting
started. I am going to Cuba by way of Key West with Frederic
Remington and Michaelson, a correspondent who has been there
for six months. We are to be taken by the
Vamoose the
fastest steam yacht made to Santa Clara province where the
Cubans will meet us and take us to Gomez. We will stay a
month with him, the yacht calling for copy and sketches once a
week, and finally for us in a month. I get all my expenses
and
The Journal pays me $3,000 for the month's work. The
Harper's Magazine also takes a story at six hundred
dollars
and Russell will reprint Remington's sketches and my story in
book form, so I shall probably clear $4,000 in the next month
or six weeks. I was a week in getting information on the
subject so I know all about it from the men who have just been
there and I want you to pay attention to what I tell you they
told me and not to listen to any stray visitor who comes in
for tea and talks without any tact or knowledge. There is no
danger in the trip except the problem of getting there and
getting away again, and that is now removed by
The
Journal's
yacht. I would have gone earlier had any of the periodicals
that asked me to go shown me any way to get there —
There is
no fever this time of year and as you know fever never
touches me. It got all the others in Central America and
never worried me at all. There is no danger of getting shot,
as the province into which we go, the Santa Clara province, is
owned and populated and patrolled by the Cubans. It is no
more Spanish than New Jersey and the Spaniards cannot get in
there. We have the strongest possible letters from the Junta,
and I have from Lamont, Bayard and Olney and credentials in
every language. We will
sit around the Gomez camp and send messengers back to the
coast. It is a three days trip and as Gomez may be moving
from place to place you may not hear from us for a month and
we may not hear from you but remember it was a much longer
time than that before you heard from me when I went to
Honduras. Also keep in mind that I am going as a
correspondent only and must keep out of the way of fighting
and that I mean to do so, as Chamberlain says we want
descriptive stories not brave deeds — Major Flint who has
arranged the trip for us was down there with Maceo as a
correspondent. He saw six fights and never shot off his gun
once because as he said it was not his business to kill people
and he has persuaded me that he is right, so I won't do
anything but look on — I have bought at
The Journal's
expense a fifty dollar field glass which is a new invention
and the best made. I have marked it so that you can see a man
five miles off and as soon as I see him I mean to begin to
ride or run the other way — no one loves himself more than I do
so you leave me to take care of myself. I wish I could give
you any idea of the contempt the four returned correspondents
who talked to me, have for the Spaniards. They have seen them
shoot 2,500 rounds without hitting men at 200 yards and they
run away if the enemy begins on them first. However, you
trust to Richard — We have a fine escort arranged for us and
Michaelson speaks Spanish perfectly and has been six months
scouting over the country.
DICK.
KEY West, December 26, 1896.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
I got your letters late last night and they made me
pretty solemn. It is an awfully solemn thing to
have people care for you like that and to care for them as I
do. I can't tell you how much I love you. You don't know how
much the pain of worrying you for a month has meant to me, but
I have talked it all out with myself, and left it to God and I
am sure I am doing right. As Mrs. Crown said, "There's a
whole churchful up here praying for you," and I guess that
will pull me through. Of course, dear, dear Mother thought
she was cross with me. She could not be cross with me, and
her letter told me how much she cared, that was all, and made
me be extra careful. But I need not promise you to be
careful. You have an idea I am a wild, filibustering,
hot-headed young man. I am not. I gave the guides to
understand their duty was to keep us out of danger if we had
to walk miles to avoid it. We are men of peace, going in, as
real estate agents and coffee-planters and drummers are going
in on every steamer, to attend to our especial work and get
out again quick. I have just as strong a prejudice against
killing a man as I have against his killing me.
Lots and lots of love. Don't get scared if you don't
hear for a month, although we will try to get our stories back
once a week, but you know we are at the convenience of the
Cubans who will pocket our despatches and money and not take
the long trip back. Thank dear Dad for his letter full of
good advice. It was excellent. Remington and Michelson are
good men and I like them immensely. Already we are firm
friends.
Love, DICK.
KEY WEST — January 1, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
As you will know by my telegram we are either off on a
safe sea going boat or waiting for one. There is no turning
back from here and the only reason I
thought of doing so was the knowledge of the way you would
suffer and worry. I argued it out that it was selfish in me
to weigh my getting laughed at and paragraphed as the war
correspondent that always Turned Back against a month of
uneasiness for you, but later I saw I could not do it much as
I love you for the element of danger to me is non-existent; it
is merely an exciting adventure and you will have to believe
me and not worry but be a Spartan mother. I would not count
being laughed at and the loss of my own self respect if I
really thought there was great danger, but I do not. You will
not lose me and if I go now I can sit still next time and say
"I have done better things than that." If I had not gone it
would have meant that I would have had to have done just that
much harder a stunt next time to make people forget that I had
failed in this one. Now do cheer up and believe in the luck
of Richard Harding Davis and the British Army. We have carte
blanche from
The Journal to buy or lease any boat on the
coast and I rocked them for $1000 in advance payment because
of the delay over the
Vamoose.
I am so happy at thinking I am going, I could not have
faced anyone had I not, although we had nothing to do with the
failure, we tried to cross fairly in the damn tub and it was
her captain who put back. I lay out on the deck and cried
when he refused to go ahead, we had waited so long. The
Cubans and Remington and Michelson had put on all their riding
things but fortunately I had not and so was spared that
humiliation. What I don't know about the Fine Art of
Filibustering now is unnecessary. I find many friends of my
Captain Boynton or "Capt. Burke." Tonight the officers of the
Raleigh give me a grand
dinner at which I wear a dress suit and make speeches — they
are the best chaps I ever met in the Navy. Lots of love and
best wishes to Dad and to Nora for a happy, happy New Year.
You know me and you know my conscience but it would not let me
go back in order to save you anxiety so you wont think me
selfish. God bless you.
DICK.
KEY WEST, January 2nd, 1897.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
I have learned here that the first quality needed to make
a great filibuster is Patience, it is not courage, or
resources or a knowledge of the Cuban Coast line, it is
patience. Anybody can run a boat into a dark bayou and dump
rifles on the beach and scurry away to sea again but only
heroes can sit for a month on a hotel porch or at the end of a
wharf, and wait. That is all we do and that is my life at Key
West. I get up and half dress and take a plunge in the bay
and then dress fully and have a greasy breakfast and then
light a huge Key West cigar, price three cents and sit on the
hotel porch with my feet on a rail — Nothing happens after
that except getting one's boots polished as the two industries
of this place are blacking boots and driving cabs. I have two
boys to black mine at the same time every morning and pay the
one who does his the better of the two — It generally ends in
a fight so that affords diversion — Then a man comes along,
any man, and says, "Remmington's looking for you" and I get up
and look for Remington. There is only a triangle of streets
where one can find him and I call at "Josh" Curry's first and
then at Pendleton's News Store and read all the back numbers
of the Police Gazette for the hundredth time and then
call here at the Custom House and then look in at the Cable
office, where Michaelson lives sending telegrams about
anything or nothing and that brings me back to the hotel porch
again, where I have my boots shined once more and then go into
mid-day dinner. In the meanwhile Remington is looking for me
a hundred yards in the rear. He generally gets to "Josh's" as
I leave the Custom House — In the afternoon I study Spanish
out of a text book and at three take a bicycle ride, at five I
call at the garrison to take tea with the doctor and his wife,
who is sweeter than angel's ever get to be with a miniature
angel of a baby called Martha. I wait until retreat is
sounded and the gun is fired at sunset and having commented
unfavorably on the way the soldiers let the flag drop on the
grass instead of catching it on the arms as a bluejacket does,
I ride off to the bay for another bath — Then I take the
launch to the
Raleigh and dine with the officers and
rejoice
in the clean fresh paint and brass and decks and the lights
and black places of a great ship of war, than which nothing is
more splendid. We sit on the quarter-deck and smoke and play
the guitar and I go home again, in time for bed. I vary this
programme occasionally by spending the morning on the end of a
wharf watching another man fish and reading old novels and the
"Lives of Captain Walker" and "Captain Fry of the Virginius,"
two great books from each of which I am going to write a short
story like the one of the Alamo or of the Jameson Raid — The
life of Walker I found on the
Raleigh and the life of
Captain Fry with all the old wood cuts and the newspaper
comments of the time at a book store here. I don't know when
we shall get away but it is no use kicking
about it, Michaelson is doing all he can and the new tug will
be along in a week anyway. I shall be so glad to get to Cuba
that I will dance with glee.
DICK.
MATANZAS, January 15th, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
I sent you a note by Remington which he will mail in the
States — From here I go to Sagua La Grande. It is on the
northern coast. I think from there I shall cross over to
Cienfuegos on the Southern coast and then if I can catch a
steamer go to Santiago to see my old friends, at the Juraqua
mines and MacWilliams' ore road and "the Palms" — Everywhere I
am treated well on account of Weyler's order and I am learning
a great deal and talking very little, my Spanish being bad.
There is war here and no mistake and all the people in the
fields have been ordered in to the fortified towns where they
are starving and dying of disease. Yesterday I saw the houses
of these people burning on both sides of the track — They gave
shelter to the insurgents and so very soon they found their
houses gone. I am so relieved at getting old Remington to go
as though I had won $5000. He was a splendid fellow but a
perfect kid and had to be humored and petted all the time. I
shall if I have luck be through with this in a few weeks but
it has had such a set back at the start that I am afraid it
can never make a book and I doubt if I can write a decent
article even. I am so anxious not to keep you worrying any
longer than is necessary and so I am hurrying along taking
only a car window view of things. Address me care of Consul
General Lee, Havana and confine your remarks to what is going
on at home. I know what is
going on here. I don't believe half I hear but I am being
slowly converted. Remington is more excitable than I am, so
don't misunderstand if he starts in violently. I am getting
details and verifying things. He is right on a big scale but
every one has lied so about this island that I do not want to
say anything I do not believe is true. This is a beautiful
little city and after Jaruco, where we slept two days ago, it
is Paris. There we slept off the barnyard and cows and
chickens walked all over the floor and fleas all over us. It
was like Honduras only filthier. Speaking of Paris, tell the
Kid I expect to go over to him soon after I return to New
York.
Lots of love. DICK.
CARDENAS — North Coast of Cuba.
January 16th, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
It is very funny not knowing what sort of a place you are
to sleep in next and taking things out of a grab bag, as it
were — In Europe you can always guess what the well known
towns will give you for you have a guide book, but here it is
all luck. Matanzas was a pretty city but the people were
awful, the hotel was Spanish and the proprietor insolent,
though I was spending more of Willie Hearst's money than all
of the officers spend in a week, the Consul could not talk
English or Spanish, he said he hadn't come there "to go to
school to no Spaniard" and he gloried in the fact he had been
there three years without knowing a word of the language. His
vice-Consul was worse and everything went wrong generally.
Every one I met was an Alarmist and that is polite for liar.
They asked Remington if he was the man who manufactured the
rifles and gave us the Iowa Democrat to
read. To night I reached here after a six hours ride through
blazing fields of sugar cane and stopped on my way to the
hotel to ask the Consul when the next boat went to Saqua la
Grande — I had no letter of introduction to him as I had to
the Matanzas consul, but as soon as he saw my card he got out
of his chair and shook hands again and was as hearty and well
bred and delightful as Charley himself and unlike Chas he did
not ask me 14 francs for looking on him. He is out now
chasing around to get me a train for to-morrow. But I won't
go to-morrow. My hotel looks on the plaza and the proprietor
and the whole suite of attendants are my slaves. It is just
as different as can be. My interpreter does it, he calls
himself
my valet, although I point out to him that two
shirts and twelve collars do not constitute a wardrobe even
with a rubber coat thrown in. But he likes to play at my
being a distinguished stranger and I can't say I object. Only
when you remember the way I was invited to see Cuba and
expected to see it, and now the way I am seeing it from car
windows with
a valet. What would the new school of yellow
kid journalists say if they knew that. For the first time on
this trip I have wished you were both with me, that was to
night. I never see anything really beautiful but that it
instantly makes me feel selfish and wish you could see it too.
It has happened again and again and to night I wish you could
be here with me on this balcony. The town runs down a slope
to the bay and in the middle of it is the Plaza with me on the
balcony which lets out of my sleeping room — "the room" so the
proprietor tells me, "reserved only for the Capitain General."
It is just like the description in that remarkable novel of
mine where Clay and Alice sit on
the balcony of the restaurant. I have the moonlight and the
Cathedral with the open doors and the bronze statue in the
middle and the royal palms moving in the breeze straight from
the sea and the people walking around the plaza below. If it
was in any way as beautiful as this Clay and Alice would have
ended the novel that night.
I got a grand lot of letters to-day which Otto, my
interpreter brought back from Havana after having conducted
Remington there in safety. I must say you are writing very
cheerfully now, but I don't wonder you worried at first but
now that I am a commercial traveller with an order from Weyler
which does everything when I find it necessary, you really
must not worry any more but just let me continue on my
uneventful journey and then come home. I shall have been gone
so long and my friends, judging from Russell and Dana and
Irene's letters, will be so glad to see me, that they will
have forgotten I went out to do other things than coast around
in trains. As a matter of fact this is a terribly big problem
and most difficult to get the truth of, I find myself growing
to be the opposite of the alarmist, whatever that is, although
you would think the picturesque and dramatic and exciting
thing would be the one I would rather believe because I want
to believe it, but I find that that is not so, I see a great
deal on both sides and I do not believe half I am told. As we
used to say at college, "it is against history," and it is
against history for men to act as I am told they are acting
here — They show me the pueblo huddled together around the
fortified towns, living in palm huts but I know that they have
always lived in palm huts, the yellow kid reporters don't know
that or consider it, but send off
word that the condition of the people is terrible, that they
have only leaves to cover them, and it sounds very badly.
That is an instance of what I mean. In a big way there is no
doubt that the process going on here is one of extermination
and ruin. Two years ago the amount of sugar shipped from the
port of Matanzas to the U. S. was valued at 11 millions a
year. This last year just over shows that sugar to the amount
of $800,000 was sent out. In '94, 154 vessels touched at
Matanzas on their way to America. In '95 there were 80 and in
'96 there are 16. I always imagined that houses were
destroyed during a war because they got in the way of cannon
balls or they were burned because they might offer shelter to
the enemy, but here they are destroyed, with the purpose of
making the war horrible and hurrying up the end. The
insurgents began first by destroying the sugar mills, some of
which were worth millions of dollars in machinery, and now the
Spaniards are burning the homes of the people and herding them
in around the towns to starve out the insurgents and to leave
them without shelter or places to go for food or to hide the
wounded. So all day long where ever you look you see great
heavy columns of smoke rising into this beautiful sky above
the magnificent palms the most noble of all palms, almost of
all trees — It is the most beautiful country I have ever
visited. I had no recollection of how beautiful it was or
else I had not the knowledge of other places with which to
compare it. Nothing out of the imagination can approach it in
its great waterfalls and mossy rocks and grand plains and
forests of white pillars with plumes waving above them. Only
man is vile here and it is cruel to see the walls of the
houses with blind eyes, with roofs gone
and gardens burned, every church but one that I have seen was
a fortress with hammocks swung from the altars and rude
barricades thrown up around the doorways — If this is war I am
of the opinion that it is a senseless wicked institution made
for soldiers, lovers and correspondents for different reasons,
and for no one else in the world and it is too expensive for
the others to keep it going to entertain these few gentlemen —
I have seen very little of it yet and I probably won't see
much more, but I have seen all I want. Remington had his mind
satisfied even sooner — but then he is an alarmist and
exaggerates things — The men who wear the red badge of
courage, I don't feel sorry for, they have their reward in
their bloody bandages and the little cross on their tunic but
those you meet coming back sick and dying with fever are the
ones that make fighting contemptible — poor little farmers,
poor little children with no interest in Cuba or Spain's right
to hold it, who have been sent out to die like ants before
they have learned to hold a mauser, and who are going back
again with the beards that have grown in the field hospitals
on their cheeks and their eyes hollow, and too weak to move or
speak. Six of them died while I was in Jaroco, a town as big
as Marion and that had been the average for two months, think
of that, six people dying in Marion every day through July and
August — I didn't stay in that town any longer than the train
did — Well I have been writing editorials here instead of
cheering you up but I guess I'm about right and when I see a
little more I'll tell it over again to
The Journal — It
is
not as exciting reading as deeds of daring by our special
correspondent and I haven't changed my name or shaved my
eyebrows or done anything the other
men have done but I believe I am getting near the truth. They
have shut off provisions going or coming from the towns, they
have huddled hundreds of people who do not know what a bath
means around these towns, and this is going to happen — As
soon as the rains begin the yellow fever and smallpox will set
in and all vessels leaving Cuban ports will be quarantined and
the island will be one great plague spot. The insurgents who
are in the open fields will live and the soldiers will die for
their officers know nothing of sanitation or care nothing.
The little Consul has just been here to see me and we have had
a long talk and I got back at him. He told me he had seen the
Franco-German war as a correspondent of
The Tribune and I
asked him if he had ever met another correspondent of
The
Tribune at that time a German student named Hans who cabled
the story of the battle of Gravellote and who Archibald Forbes
says was the first correspondent to use the cable. The Consul
who looks like William D. Howells wriggled around in his chair
and said "I guess you mean me but I was not a German student,
I was born and raised in Philadelphia and Forbes got my name
wrong, it is Hance." So then I got up and shook hands with
him in my turn and told him I had always wanted to meet that
correspondent and did not expect to do so in Cardenas, on the
coast of Cuba.
Thank you all for your letters. I am glad you liked the
Jameson book. I thought you knew I was a F. R. G. S. It was
George Curzon proposed me and as he is a gold medallist of the
Society it was easy getting in. Lots of love.
DICK.
Richard returned to New York from Cuba in February, 1897,
but the following month started for Florence to pay me a
long-promised visit. On his way he stopped for a few days in
London and Paris.
DES ETATS-UNIS
59 Rue Galilee,
Paris, April 1st, 1897.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
I got over here to-day after the heaviest weather I ever
tackled on this channel. Stephen Crane came with me. I gave
him a lunchon Wednesday. Anthony Hope, McCarthy, Harold
Frederic and Barrie came. Sir Evelyn Wood instead of coming
was detained at the war office and sent instead a lance
Sergeant on horseback with a huge envelope marked "On Her
Majesty's Service," which was to be delivered into my hands —
The entire Savoy was upset and it was generally supposed that
war had been declared and that I was being ordered to the
front — The whole hotel hung over us until I had receipted for
the package and the soldier had saluted and clanked away. I
gave Crane the letter as a souvenir. I also saw Seymour
Hicks' first night and recognized 15 American songs in it.
The London Times offered me the position of
correspondent on the Greek frontier. Every one in London thought
it an enormous compliment and Harold Frederic, Ralph, Ballard
Smith and the rest were very envious. I told them I could not
go, but I was glad to have had the compliment paid me. Barrie
has made out a scenario of the "Soldiers" for dramatic
purposes and has asked the Haymarket management to consider
it. So, that I guess that it must be good —
So, I also guess I had better finish it — I leave for Florence
to night. I am having a fine, fine time and I am so glad you
are all well.
Lots of love,
DICK.
Of the many happy days we have spent together, I do not
believe there were any much more happy than the three weeks
Richard remained with me. It was his first long visit to
Italy and from the day of his arrival he loved the old town
and its people who gave him a most friendly welcome. He had
come at a time when Florence was at its best, its narrow
quaint streets filled with sunshine and thronged with idling
natives and the scurrying tourists that always came with the
first days of spring. The Cascine and the pink-walled roads
of the environs were ablaze with wild roses and here, after
his rather strenuous experience in Cuba, Richard gave himself
up to long days of happy idleness. Together we took voyages
of discovery to many of the little walled and forgotten towns
where the tourists seldom set foot. Once we even wandered so
far as Monte Carlo, where my brother tried very hard to break
the bank and did not succeed. But the Richard Harding Davis
luck did not fail him completely and I remember I greatly
envied him the huge pile of gold and notes that represented
his winnings and which we did our very best to spend before we
left the land of the Prince of Monaco. However, having had
his first taste of war, Richard felt that he must leave the
peace and content of Florence to see how the Greeks, with whom
he had much sympathy, were faring with their enemies the
Turks. As it happened, this expedition proved but a short
interruption,
and in less than a month he was once more back with
his new-found friends in Florence.
April 28, 1897
On the Way to Patras on a Steamer.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
It has been a week since I wrote you last, when I sent
you the Inauguration article. Since then I have been having
the best time I ever had any place alone. I have had more
fun with a crowd, but never have been so happy by myself.
What I would have been had I taken some other chap with me I
cannot imagine. But the people of this part of Greece have
been so kind that I cannot say I have been alone. I never met
with strangers anywhere who were so hospitable, so confiding
and polite. After that slaughter-yard and pest place of Cuba,
which is much more terrible to me now than it was when I was
there, or before I had seen that war can be conducted like any
other evil of civilization, this opera bouffe warfare is like
a duel between two gentlemen in the Bois. Cuba is like a
slave-holder beating a slave's head in with a whip. I am a
war correspondent only by a great stretch of the imagination;
I am a peace correspondent really, and all the fighting I have
seen was by cannon at long range. (I was at long range, not
the cannon.) I am doing this campaign in a personally
conducted sense with no regard to the Powers or to the London
Times. I did send them an article called "The Piping
Times
of War." If they do not use it I shall illustrate it with the
photos I have taken and sell it, for five times the sum they
would give, to the Harpers who are ever with us. As I once
said in a noted work, "Greece, Mrs. Morris, restores all your
lost illusions." For
the last week I have been back in the days of Conrad, the
Corsair, and "Oh, Maid of Athens, ere We Part." I have been
riding over wind-swept hills and mountains topped with snow,
and with sheep and goats and wild flowers of every color
spreading for acres, and in a land where every man dresses by
choice like a grand opera brigand, and not only for
photographic purposes. I have been on the move all the time,
chasing in the rear of armies that turn back as soon as I
approach and apologize for disappointing me of a battle, or
riding to the scene of a battle that never comes off, or
hastening to a bombardment that turns out to be an attack on
an empty fort.
I live on brown bread and cheese and goat's milk and
sleep like a log in shepherds' huts. It is so beautiful that
I almost grudge the night. Nora and Mother could take this
trip as safely as a regiment and would see things out of
fairyland. And such adventures! Late in life I am at last
having adventures and honors heaped upon me. I was elected a
captain of a band of brigands who had been watching a mountain
pass for a month, and as it showed no signs of running away
had taken to dancing on the green. I caught them at this
innocent pastime and they allowed me to photograph them and
give them wine at eight cents a quart which we drank out of a
tin stovepipe. They drank about four feet of stovepipe or
thirty-six cents' worth, then they danced and sang for me in a
circle, old men and boys, then drilled with their carbines,
and I showed them my revolver and field-glasses and themselves
in the finder of the camera; and when I had to go they took me
on their shoulders and marched me around waving their rifles.
Then the old men kissed me on the cheek and we all embraced
and they wept, and I
felt as badly as though I were parting from fifty friends.
They told my guide that if I would come back they would get
fifty more "as brave as they" and I could be captain. I could
not begin to tell you all the amusing things that have
happened in this one week. I did not want to come at all,
only a stern sense of duty made me. For I wanted to write the
play in Charley's gilded halls and get to Paris and London.
But I can never cease rejoicing that I took this trip. And it
will make the book, "A Year from a Reporter's Diary," as
complete as it can be. That was why I came. Now I have the
Coronation of the Czar, the Millennial at Hungary, the
Inauguration at Washington, the Queen's Jubilee, the War in
Cuba, and the Greco-Turkish War. That is a good year's work
and I mean to loaf after it. You will laugh and say that that
is what I always say, but if you knew how I had to kick myself
out of Florence and the Cascine to come here you would believe
me. I want a rest and I am cutting this very short.
Don't fail to cut anything Dad and Mother don't like out
of the Inauguration article. You will have me with you this
winter on my little bicycle and going to dances and not paying
board to anyone. Remember how I used to threaten to go to
Greece when the coffee was not good. It seems too funny now,
for I never was in a better place, or had more fun or saw less
of war or the signs of war.
DICK.
May 7, 1897.
10 East Twenty-Eighth Street-NIT
Sponitza.
[DEAR CHAS.]
This is one of the places out of Phroso, but as you never
read Phroso I will cut all that — I hate to say
it so soon again but this is the most beautiful country to
travel over I have seen — It is a fairy theatrical grand opera
country where everybody dresses in petticoats and gold braided
vests and carry carbines to tend sheep with — I rode from
Santa Maura (see map) to a spot opposite Prevesa where they
said there was going to be bombarding — There was not of
course but I had I think the most beautiful ride of my life.
I was absolutely happy — little lambs bleated and kids butted
each other and peasants in fur cloaks without sleeves and in
tights like princes sat on rocks and played pipes and the sky
was blue, the mountains covered with snow and the fields and
hills full of purple bushes and yellow and blue flowers and
sheep — There was a cable station of yellow adobe. It was the
only building and it looked across at Prevesa but nobody
bombarded. The general gave me cognac and the cable operator
played a guitar for me and the preyor sang a fine bass, the
corporal not to be out done gave me chocolate and the army
stood around in the sun and joined in the conversation
correcting the general and each other and taking off their
hats to all the noble sentiments we toasted. It was just like
a comic opera. After a while when I had finished a fine hunck
of cheese and hard eggs and brown bread I took a photograph of
the General and the cable operator and the officer with the
bass voice and half of the army — The other half was then sent
to escort me to this place. It walked and I rode and there
were many halts for drinks and cigarettes. They all ran after
a stray colt and were lost for some time but we re-mobilized
and advanced with great effect into this town. I was here
taken in charge by at least fifty sailors and as many soldiers
and comic opera brigands in drawers and white petticoats,
who conducted me to a house on the hill where the
innkeeper brought me a live chicken to approve of for dinner.
Then the mayor of the town turned up in gold clothes and
Barrison Sister skirts and said the General had telegraphed
about me and that I was his — The innkeeper wept and said he
had seen me first and the chorus of soldiers, sailors and
brigands all joined in. I kept out of it but I knew the Mayor
would win and he did. Then we went out to a man-of-war the
size of the
Vagabond and were solemnly assured there would
be bombarding of Prevesa to-morrow — I go to sleep in that
hope. We leave here at seven crossing the river and ride
after the Greeks who are approaching Prevesa from the land
side while the men-of-war bombard it from the river. At least
that is what they say. I think it is the mildest war on both
sides I ever heard of and I certainly mean to be a
Times
correspondent next time I play at going to war — After being
insulted and frightened to death all over Cuba, this is the
pleasantest picnic I was ever on — They seriously apologized
for not bombarding while I was there and I said not to mention
it — With lots of love, old man, and to the family
DICK.
FLORENCE
May 16, 1897.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
Here I am safe and sound again in the old rooms in
Florence. I was gone twenty-three days and was traveling
nineteen of them, walking, riding; in sailboats, in the cars,
and on steamers. I have had more experiences and adventures
than I ever had before in three months and quite enough to
last me for years.
After my happy ride through Turkey and the retreat of the
Greek army in Arta, of which I wrote you last, I have been in
Thessaly where I saw the two days' battle of Velestinos from
the beginning up to the end. It was the one real battle of
the war and the Greeks fought well from the first to the last.
I left Athens on the 29th of April with John Bass, a Harvard
graduate, and a most charming and attractive youth who is, or
was, in charge of the Journal men; Stephen Crane being among
the number. He seems a genius with no responsibilities of any
sort to anyone, and I and Bass left him at Velestinos after
traveling with him for four days. Crane went to Volo, as did
every other correspondent, leaving Bass and myself in
Velestinos. As the villagers had run away, we burglarized the
house of the mayor and made it our habitation while the
courier hunted for food. It was like "The Swiss Family
Robinson," and we rejoiced over the discovery of soap and
tablecloths and stray knives and forks, just as though we had
been cast on a desert island. Bass did the cooking and I laid
the table and washed up and made the beds, which were full of
fleas. But we had been sleeping on chairs and on the floor
for a week so we did not mind much.
The second day we were awakened by cannon and you can
imagine our joy and excitement. We had it all to ourselves
for eight hours, as it took the other correspondents that long
to arrive. It was an artillery and infantry battle and about
20,000 men were engaged on both sides. The Greeks fought from
little trenches on the hills back of the town and the Turks
advanced across a great green prairie. It was very long range
and only twice did they get to within a quarter of a mile of
our trenches. Bass and I went all over the
Greek lines, for you were just as safe in one place as in
another, which means that it wasn't safe anywhere, so we gave
up considering that and followed the fight as best we could
from the first trench, which was the only one that gave an
uninterrupted view of the Turkish forces. It was a
brilliantly clear day but opened with a hail storm, which
enabled the Turks to crawl up half a mile in the sudden
darkness. It also gave me the worst attack of sciatica I ever
had. Fortunately, it did not come on badly until I reached
Volo, when it suddenly took hold of me so that I could not
walk. The trenches were wet with the rain and we had no
clothes to change to, and two more showers kept us more or
less wet all day. We had a fine view of everything and I
learned a lot.
We were under a heavy fire for thirteen hours and
certainly had some very close escapes. At times the firing
was so fierce that if you had raised your arm above your head,
the hand would have been instantly torn off. We had to lie on
our stomachs with our chins in the dirt and not so much as
budge. This was when the Turkish fire happened to be directed
on our trench. At such times all the other trenches would
fire so as to draw the attack away, and we would have to wait
until it was over. The shells sounded like the jarring sound
of telegraph wires when one hits the pole they hang from with
a stone; and when the shells were close they sounded like the
noise made by two trains passing in opposite directions when
the wind is driven between the cars. The bullets were much
worse than the shells as you could always hear them coming,
and the bullets slipped up and passed you in a sneaking way
with a noise like rustling silk, or if some one had torn a
silk handkerchief with a sharp pull. One shell
struck three feet from me and knocked me over with the dirt
and stones and filled my nose and mouth with pebbles. I went
back and dug it out of the ground while it was still hot and
have it as a souvenir. I swore terribly at the bullets and
Bass used to grin in a sickly way. It made your hair creep
when they came very close. One man next me got a shot through
the breast while he was ramming his cleaner down the barrel,
and there were three killed within the limits of our fifty
yards. We could not get back because there was a cross fire
that swept a place we had to pass through, just about the way
the wind comes around the City Hall in the times of a
blizzard. We called it Dead Man's Curve, after that at
Fourteenth Street and Union Square, because it was sprinkled
with dead ammunition, mules and soldiers. We came through it
the first time without knowing what we were getting into and
we had no desire to go back again. So we waited until the sun
set. I took some of the finest photographs and probably the
only ones ever taken of a battle at such close range.
Whenever the men fired, I would shoot off the camera and I
expect I have some pretty great pictures. Bass took some of
me so if there is any question as to whether I was at the
Coronation, there will be none as to whether I was at
Velestinos.
Our house was hit with two shells and bullets fell like
the gentle rain from heaven all over the courtyard, so we
would have been no safer there than behind the trenches. We
sent off the first account of the battle written by anybody by
midday, and stayed on until the next day at four when the
place was evacuated in good order because, as usual, the
Crown Prince was running away — from Pharsalia this time.
They say in Greece "Lewes, the peasant, won the race from
Marathon, but Constantine the prince, won the race from
Larissa."
I was all right until I got to Volo when my right leg
refused absolutely to do its act and I had to be carried on a
donkey. A Greek thought I looked funny sitting groaning on
the little donkey; which I did — I looked ridiculous. So he
laughed, and Bass and a French journalist batted him over the
face and left me clinging to the donkey's neck and howling to
them to come back and hold me up. But they preferred to
fight, and a policeman came along and arrested the unhappy
Greek and beat him over the head, just for luck, and marched
him off to jail, just for laughing.
They took me to the hospital ship which was starting, and
I came to Athens that way with one hundred and sixteen
wounded; the man on my right had his ankles gone and the man
on the left had a bullet in his side. They groaned all night
and so did I. Then when the sun rose they sang, which was
worse. I never saw anything more beautiful than the red-cross
nurses, and I guess that is the most beautiful picture I shall
ever see — those sweet-faced girls in blue and white bending
over the dirty frightened little peasant boys and taking care
of their wounds. I made love to all of them and asked three
to marry me. I was in bed for two days after I got to Athens
but had a fine time, as all the officers from the San
Francisco, from the admiral down, came to see me, and the
minister, consul and the rest did all that could have been
done. I am now all right and was bicycling in the dear old
Cascine this morning. On the whole it was a most successful
trip. Sylvester Scovel and Phillips of The
World arrived just as it was all over, and so Bass and I are
about the only two Americans who were in it.
The train from Brindisi stopped at Rome on the way back
and I went to see the Pages. They took me out and showed me
Rome by moonlight in one hour. It was like a cinematograph.
They are here now and coming to dinner tonight. Last night
the consul had all our friends to dinner to welcome me back,
and maybe I was not glad. I had been living on cheese and
brown bread and cold lamb for two weeks, with no tobacco, and
sleeping five hours a night on floors and sofas. Sometimes
the officers and men fought for food, and we never got
anything warm to eat except occasionally tinned things which
we cooked in my kit. It was the most satisfactory trip all
round I ever had. I have been twenty years trying to be in a
battle and it will be twenty years more before I will want to
be in another.
On the eighteenth I start for London, stopping one day in
Paris to see the Clarks and Eustises. It is going to be
bigger than the Coronation for crowds, and Mother need not
worry, I shall keep out of it. The Minister to Russia sent me
word that the Czar's prime minister has given him my article
and that the Czar said thank him very much. So that is all
right. Also Hay is to present me to the Prince at the levee
on the 31st of May, and I shall send him a copy, too. I am
looking forward to London with such joy. Tell Mother to send
me the Bookbuyer with her article in it. I have only read
the reviews of it, and they are so enthusiastic that I must
have the whole thing quick. It was such a fine thing to do
about Poe, and to give those other two fetishes the coup de
grace. It reads splendidly and I want it all. What did Dad
think of
the Inauguration article? I send you all my dearest love and
will have lots to tell you when I get back this time.
God bless you all.
DICK.
Richard left Florence the latter part of May, and went to
London where he had made arrangements to report the Queen's
Jubilee. He began his round of gayeties by being presented at
Court. The Miss Groves and Miss Wather to whom he refers in
the following letter were the clerks at Cox's hotel.
LONDON, June 2nd, 1897.
[DEAR FAMILY:]
I was a beautiful sight at the Levee. I wore a velvet
suit made especially for me but no dearer for that and steel
buttons and a beautiful steel sword and a court hat with
silver on the side and silk stockings that I wore at Moscow
and pumps with great buckles. I was too magnificent for words
and so you would have said. I waited a long time in a long
hall crowded with generals and sea captains and highlanders
and volunteers and cavalry men and judges and finally was
admitted past a rope and then past another rope and then
rushed along into the throne room where I saw beefeaters and
life guardsmen and chamberlains with white wands and I gave
one my card and he read out "R. H. D. of the United States by
the American Ambassador" and then I bowed to the Prince and
Duke of York, Connaught and Edinburgh and to the American
Ambassador and then Henry White and Spencer Eddy, the two
Secretaries and the naval attache all shook hands with me and
I went around in a hansom in the bright sunshine in hopes of
finding some one
who would know me. But no one did so I went to Cox's Hotel
and showed myself to Miss Groves and Miss Wather. I went on
the Terrace yesterday with the Leiters and at O'Connor's
invitation brought them to tea. Labouchere was there and
Dillon just out of jail and it was most interesting. I am
very, very busy doing nothing and having a fine time —
DICK.
LONDON, June 21, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
Words cannot tell at least not unless I am well paid for
it what London is like to-day. In the first place it is so
jammed that no one can move and it is hung with decorations so
that no one can see. Royal carriages get stuck just as do the
humble drayman or Pickford's Van and royalties are lodging in
cheap hotels with nothing but a couple of Grenadier's in
sentry boxes to show they are any better blooded than the rest
of the lodgers. I also added to the confusion by giving a
lunch to the Ambassador and Miss Hay in return for the
presentation. Lady Henry and Mrs. Asquith sat on either side
of him and Mrs. Clark had Asquith and Lord Basil Blackwood to
talk to — There was also Anthony Hope, the beautiful Julia
Neilson and her husband Fred Terry and Lady Edward Cecil and
Lord Lester — It went off fine and the Savoy people sent in an
American Eagle of ice, decorated with American flags and
dripping icy tears from its beak. It cost me five shillings a
head and looked as though it cost that in pounds — To night I
dine with the Goulds and then go to a musical where Melba
sings, Padewreski plays and then walk the streets if I can
until daybreak as I think of making the night before
the procession the greater part of the story. I send you a
plan showing my seat which cost me twenty-five dollars, the
advertised price being $125. but there has been a terrible
slump in seats. Love to dear Dad and Nora.
DICK.
LONDON.
89 Jermyn Street,
June 25th, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
The Jubilee turned out to be the easiest spectacle to get
at and to get away from that I ever witnessed. Experience in
choosing a place and police regulations made it so simple that
we went straight to our seats and got away again without as
much trouble as it would have taken to have gone to a matinee.
The stage management of the thing almost impressed me more
than anything else. For grandeur and show it about equalled
the procession of the Czar and in many ways it was more
interesting because it was concerned with our own people and
with our own part of the world. Next to the Queen, Lord
Roberts got all of the applause. He rode a little white pony
that had been with him in six campaigns and had carried him on
his march to Candahar. It had all the campaign medals
presented to it by the War Department and wore them in a line
on its forehead, and walked just as though he knew what a
great occasion it was. After Roberts came in popularity a
Col. Maurice Clifford with the Rhodesian Horse in sombrero's
and cartridge belts and khaki suits. He had lost his arm and
was easily recognized. Wilfred Laurier the French Premier of
Canada and the Lord Mayor were the other favourites. The
scene in front of St. Paul's was absolutely
magnificent with the sooty pillars behind the groups
of diplomats, bishops and choir boys in white, University men
in pink silk gowns, and soldiers, beef eaters, gentlemen at
arms and the two Archbishops. The best moment was when the
collected troops; negroes, Chinamen, East Indians, West
Indians, African troopers, Canadian Mounted Police,
Australians, Borneo police and English Grenadiers all sang the
doxology together in the beautiful sunshine and under the
shadow of that great facade of black and white marble. Also
when the Archbishop of Canterbury without any warning suddenly
after kissing the Queen's hand threw up his arm and cried out
so that you could have heard him a hundred yards off "Three
Cheers for Her Majesty" and the diplomats, and foreign rajahs
and bishops and Salvation Army captains waved their hats and
mortar boards and the soldiers ran their bearskins and helmets
on their bayonets and spun them around in the air. The
weather was absolutely perfect and there were no accidents.
Last night the carriages were allowed to parade the streets
and for hours the route was blocked with omnibuses hired by
private parties, coster carts, private carriages, court
carriages and the hansoms. The procession formed by these was
two hours in going one mile. They passed my windows in Jermyn
Street for three hours and a party of us sat inside and guyed
the life out of them until one in the morning. We got very
clever at it finally and very impudent and as the people were
only two yards from us my windows being on a level with the
tops of the buses and as we had a flaring illumination that
lit up the street completely we had lots of fun with them
especially with the busses, as we pretended to believe that
the advertisements referred
to the people on the top, and we would ask anxiously
which lady was "Lottie Collins" and which gentleman had been
brought up on " Mellin's Food" — We had even more fun with the
swells coming home from the Gala night at the opera and hemmed
in between costers and Pickford's vans loaded down with women
and children.
They called on us for speeches and matches and segars and
we kept the procession supplied with food and drink. Nobody
got mad and they answered back but we were prepared with
numerous repartees and they were apparently so surprised by
finding a party of ladies and gentlemen engaged in chaffing
court officials that they would forget to reply until they had
moved on. One bus driver said "Oh, you can larff, cause your
at 'ome. We are 'unting for Jensen on a North Pole
Expedition. We won't be home for three years yet — " Charley
seems very happy and he got a most hearty welcome. I shall
follow him over. I do not think I shall go when he does as
that would mean seeing people and getting settled and I must
get the Greek war done by the 12th of July and the Jubilee by
the 15th of August. I know you will not mind, but I have been
terribly interrupted by the Jubilee and by so many visitors.
They are running in all the time, so I shall try to get the
Greek war article done before I sail and also have a little
peaceful view of London. I have seen nothing of it really
yet. It has been like living in a circus, and moving about on
an election night. I am well as can be except for occasional
twinges of sciatica but I have not had to go to bed with it
and some times it disappears for a week. A little less rain
and more sun will stop it. I hope you do not mind my not
returning but we will all be together
for many months this Fall and I really feel that I have
not had a quiet moment here for pleasure and work. It has
been such a rush. I do wish to see dear Dad. I am so very
sorry about his being ill, and I hope he is having lots of
fishing. Love to all at Marion — and God bless you.
RICHARD.
LONDON
July 13, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
Today Barrie gave a copyright performance of "The Little
Minister" which Maude Adams is to play in the States. It was
advertised by a single bill in front of the Haymarket Theater
and the price of admission was five guineas. We took in
fifteen guineas, the audience being Charley Frohman, Lady
Craig and a man. Cyril Maude played the hero and Brandon
Thomas and Barrie the two low comedy parts — two Scotchmen of
Thrums. I started to play one of them, but as I insisted on
making it an aged negro with songs, Barrie and Frohman got
discouraged and let me play the villain, Lord Rintoul, in
which character I was great. Maude played his part in five
different ways and dialects so as to see which he liked best,
he said. It was a bit confusing. Then one of the actors went
up in the gallery and pretended to be a journalist critic who
had sneaked in, and he abused the play and the actors with the
exception of the man who played Whamond (himself) whom he said
he thought showed great promise. Maude pretended not to know
who he was and it fooled everybody. Mrs. Barrie played the
gipsy and danced most of the time, which she said was her
conception of the part as it was in the book. Her husband
explained that this was a
play, not a book, but she did not care and danced on and off.
She played my daughter, and I had a great scene in which I
cursed her, which got rounds of applause. Lady Lewis's
daughters in beautiful Paquin dresses played Scotch lassies,
and giggled in all the sad parts, and one actress who had made
a great success as one of the "Two Vagabonds" made everybody
weep by really trying to act. At one time there were five men
on the stage all talking Scotch dialect and imitating Irving
at the same time. It was a truly remarkable performance.
Ethel Barrymore goes back on Saturday with Drew to play a
French maid in "A Marriage of Convenience." She is announced
to be engaged to Hope, I see by the papers. They are not
engaged, of course, but the papers love to make matches. Look
for me as sailing either on the 31st on the
St. Louis or a
week later. With lots and lots of love.
DICK.
In the late summer Richard returned to Marion and from
there went to New York. However, at this time, the lure of
England was very strong with my brother, and early December
found him back in London.
LONDON, December 29th, 1897.
[DEAR MOTHER: — ]
I had a most exciting Christmas, most of which I spent in
Whitechapel in the London Hospital. I lunched with the
Spenders and then went down with them carrying large packages
for distribution to the sick. I expected to be terribly
bored, but thought I would feel so virtuous that I would the
better enjoy my dinner which I had promised to take with the
McCarthys — On the contrary, I had the most amusing time and
much more fun than I had later. The patients seemed only to
be playing sick, and some of them were very humorous and
others very pathetic and I played tin soldiers with some, and
distributed rich gifts, other people had paid for, with a
lavish hand. I also sat on a little girl's cot and played
dolls for an hour. She had something wrong with her spine and
I wept most of the time, chiefly because she smiled all the
time. She went asleep holding on to my middle finger like the
baby in "The Luck of Roaring Camp." There were eighty babies
in red flannel nightgowns buttoned up the back who had pillow
fights in honor of the day and took turns in playing on a
barrel organ, those that were strong and tall enough. In the
next ward another baby in white was dying — Its mother was a
coster girl, seventeen years old, with a big hat and plumes
like those the flower girls wear at Piccadilly Circus. The
baby was yellow like old ivory and its teeth and gums were
blue and it died while we were watching it. The mother girl
was drinking tea and crying into it out of red swollen eyes,
and twenty feet off one of the red nightgowned kids was
playing "Louisiana Lou" on the barrel organ. The nurse put
the baby's arms under the sheets and then pulled one up over
its face and took the teacup away from the mother who didn't
see what had happened and I came away while three young nurses
were comforting the girl. Most of the nurses were very
beautiful, and I neglected my duties as Santa Claus to talk to
them. They would stop talking to get down on their knees and
dust up the floor, which was most embarrassing, you couldn't
very well ask to be let to help. There was one coster who had
his broken leg in a cage which
moved with the leg no matter how much he tossed. He was like
the man "who sat in jail without his boots, admiring how the
world was made," he spent all his waking hours in wrapt
admiration of the cage — He said to me "I've been here a
fortnight now, come Monday, and I can't break my leg no how.
Yer can't do it, that's all — Yer can twist, and kick, and
toss, and it don't do no good. Yer jest can't do it — Now you
take notice." Then he would kick violently and the cage would
run around on trolleys and keep the broken limb straight.
"See!" he would exclaim, "Wot did I tell you — Its no use of
trying, yer just can't do it. 'ere I've been ten days a
trying and it can't be done."
We had a very fine Christmas dinner just Ethel, the
McCarthy's and I. Fanny, tell Charles, brought in the plum
pudding with a sprig of holly in it and blazing, and after
dinner I read them the Jackall — About eleven I started to
take Ethel to Miss Terry's, who lives miles beyond Kensington.
There was a light fog. I said that all sorts of things ought
to happen in a fog but that no one ever did have adventures
nowadays. At that we rode straight into a bank of fog that
makes those on the fishing banks look like Spring sunshine.
You could not see the houses, nor the street, nor the horse,
not even his tail. All you could see were gas jets, but not
the iron that supported them. The cabman discovered the fact
that he was lost and turned around in circles and the horse
slipped on the asphalt which was thick with frost, and then we
backed into lamp-posts and curbs until Ethel got so scared she
bit her under lip until it bled. You could not tell whether
you were going into a house or over a precipice or into a sea.
The horse finally backed
up a flight of steps, and rubbed the cabby against a, front
door, and jabbed the wheels into an area railing and fell
down. That, I thought, was our cue to get out, so we slipped
into a well of yellow mist and felt around for each 'other
until a square block of light suddenly opened in mid air and
four terrified women appeared in the doorway of the house
through which the cabman was endeavoring to butt himself.
They begged us to come in, and we did — Being Christmas and
because the McCarthy's always call me "King" I had put on all
my decorations and the tin star and I also wore my beautiful
fur coat, to which I have treated myself, and a grand good
thing it is, too — I took this off because the room was very
hot, forgetting about the decorations and remarked in the same
time to Ethel that it would be folly to try and get to
Barkston Gardens, and that we must go back to the "Duchess's"
for the night. At this Ethel answered calmly "yes, Duke," and
I became conscious of the fact that the eyes of the four women
were riveted on my fur coat and decorations. At the word
"Duke" delivered by a very pretty girl in an evening frock and
with nothing on her hair the four women disappeared and
brought back the children, the servants, and the men, who were
so overcome with awe and excitement and Christmas cheer that
they all but got down on their knees in a circle. So, we fled
out into the night followed by minute directions as to where
"Your Grace" and "Your Ladyship" should turn. For years, no
doubt, on a Christmas Day the story will be told in that
house, wherever it may be in the millions of other houses of
London, how a beautiful Countess and a wicked Duke were
pitched into their front door out of a hansom cab, and after
having partaken of their
Christmas supper, disappeared again into a sea of fog. The
only direction Ethel and I could remember was that we were to
go to the right when we came to a Church, so when by feeling
our way by the walls we finally reached a church we continued
going on around it until we had encircled it five times or it
had encircled us, we were not sure which. After the fifth lap
we gave up and sat down on the steps. Ethel had on low
slippers and was shivering and coughing but intensely amused
and only scared for fear she would lose her voice for the
first night of "Peter" — We could hear voices sometimes, like
people talking in a dream, and sometimes the sound of dance
music, and a man's voice calling "Perlice" in a discouraged
way as if he didn't much care whether the police came or not,
but regularly like a fog siren — I don't know how long we sat
there or how long we might have sat there had not a man with a
bicycle lamp loomed up out of the mist and rescued us. He had
his mother with him and she said with great pride that her boy
could find his way anywhere. So, we clung to her boy and
followed. A cabman passed leading his horse with one of his
lamps in his other hand and I turned for an instant to speak
to him and Ethel and her friends disappeared exactly as though
the earth had opened. So, I yelled after them, and Ethel said
"Here, I am," at my elbow. It was like the chesire cat that
kept appearing and disappearing until he made Alice dizzy. We
finally found a link-boy and he finally found the McCarthy's
house, and I left them giving Ethel quinine and whiskey. They
wanted me to stay, but I could not face dressing, in the
morning. So I felt my way home and only got lost twice. The
Arch on Constitution Hill gave me much trouble. I thought it
was the Marble Arch, and hence — In Jermyn Street
I saw two lamps burning dimly and a voice said, hearing my
footsteps "where am I? I don't know where I am no more than
nothing — " I told him he was in Jermyn Street with his horse's
head about twenty feet from St. James — There was a long
dramatic silence and then the voice said — "Well, I be blowed
I thought I was in Pimlico!!!"
This has been such a long letter that I shall have to
skip any more. I have NO sciatica chiefly because of the fur
coat, I think, and I got two Christmas presents, one from
Margaret Fraser and one from the Duchess of Sutherland —
Boxing Day I took Margaret to the matinee of the Pantomine and
it lasted five hours, until six twenty, then I dressed and
dined with the Hay's and went with them to the Barnum circus
which began at eight and lasted until twelve. It was a busy
day.
Lots of love. DICK.
LONDON, March 20, 1898.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
The Nellie Farren benefit was the finest thing I have
seen this year past. It was more remarkable than the
Coronation, or the Jubilee. It began at twelve o'clock on
Thursday, but at ten o'clock Wednesday night, the crowd began
to gather around Drury Lane, and spent the night on the
sidewalk playing cards and reading and sleeping. Ten hours
later they were admitted, or a few of them were, as many as
the galleries would hold. Arthur Collins, the manager of the
Drury Lane and the man who organized the benefit, could not
get a stall for his mother the day before the benefit. They
were then not to be had, the last having sold for twelve
guineas. I got two the morning of the benefit for three
pounds each, and now
people believe that I did get into the Coronation! The people
who had stalls got there at ten o'clock, and the streets were
blocked for "blocks" up to Covent Garden with hansoms and
royal carriages and holders of tickets at fifty dollars
apiece. It lasted six hours and brought in thirty thousand
dollars. Kate Vaughan came back and danced after an absence
from the stage of twelve years. Irving recited The Dream of
Eugene Aram, Terry played Ophelia, Chevalier sang Mrs.
Hawkins, Dan Leno gave Hamlet, Marie Tempest sang The Jewel of
Asia and Hayden Coffin sang Tommy Atkins, the audience of
three thousand people joining in the chorus, and for an encore
singing "Oh, Nellie, Nellie Farren, may your love be ever
faithful, may your pals be ever true, so God bless you Nellie
Farren, here's the best of luck to you." In Trial by Jury,
Gilbert played an associate judge; the barristers were all
playwrights, the jury the principal comedians, the chorus
girls were real chorus girls from the Gaiety mixed in with
leading ladies like Miss Jeffries and Miss Hanbury, who could
not keep in step. But the best part of it was the pantomime.
Ellaline came up a trap with a diamond dress and her hair down
her back and electric lights all over her, and said, "I am the
Fairy Queen," and waved her wand, at which the "First Boy" in
the pantomime said, "Go long, now, do, we know your tricks,
you're Ellaline Terriss"; and the clown said, "You're wrong,
she's not, she's Mrs. Seymour Hicks." Then Letty Lind came on
as Columbine in black tulle, and Arthur Roberts as the
policeman, and Eddy Payne as the clown and Storey as
Pantaloon.
The rest of it brought on everybody. Sam Sothern played
a "swell" and stole a fish. Louis Freear, a housemaid, and
all the leading men appeared as policemen.
No one had more than a line to speak which just gave the
audience time to recognize him or her. The composers and
orchestra leaders came on as a German band, each playing an
instrument, and they got half through the Washington Post
before the policemen beat them off. Then Marie Lloyd and all
the Music Hall stars appeared as street girls and danced to
the music of a hand-organ. Hayden Coffin, Plunkett Greene and
Ben Davies sang as street musicians and the clown beat them
with stuffed bricks. After that there was a revue of all the
burlesques and comic operas, then the curtain was raised from
the middle of the stage, and Nellie Farren was discovered
seated at a table on a high stage with all the "legitimates"
in frock-coats and walking dresses rising on benches around
her.
The set was a beautiful wood scene well lighted. Wyndham
stood on one side of her, and he said the yell that went up
when the curtain rose was worse than the rebel yell he had
heard in battles. In front of her, below the stage, were all
the people who had taken part in the revue, forming a most
interesting picture. There was no one in the group who had
not been known for a year by posters or photographs: Letty
Lind as the Geisha, Arthur Roberts as Dandy Dan. The French
Girl and all the officers from The Geisha, the ballet girls
from the pantomime, the bareback-riders from The Circus Girl;
the Empire costumes and the monks from La Poupee, and all the
Chinese and Japanese costumes from The Geisha. Everybody on
the stage cried and all the old rounders in the boxes cried.
It was really a wonderfully dramatic spectacle to see the
clown and officers and Geisha girls weeping down their grease
paint. Nellie Farren's great song
was one about a street Arab with the words: "Let me hold
your, nag, sir, carry your little bag, sir, anything you
please to give — thank'ee, sir!" She used to close her hand,
then open it and look at the palm, then touch her cap with a
very wonderful smile, and laugh when she said, "Thank'ee,
sir!" This song was reproduced for weeks before the benefit,
and played all over London, and when the curtain rose on her,
the orchestra struck into it and the people shouted as though
it was the national anthem. Wyndham made a very good address
and so did Terry, then Wyndham said he would try to get her to
speak. She has lost the use of her hands and legs and can
only walk with crutches, so he put his arm around her and her
son lifted her from the other side and then brought her to her
feet, both crying like children. You could hear the people
sobbing, it was so still. She said, "Ladies and Gentleman,"
looking at the stalls and boxes, then she turned her head to
the people on the stage below her and said, "Brothers and
Sisters," then she stood looking for a long time at the
gallery gods who had been waiting there twenty hours. You
could hear a long "Ah" from the gallery when she looked up
there, and then a "hush" from all over it and there was
absolute silence. Then she smiled and raised her finger to
her bonnet and said, "Thank'ee, sir," and sank back in her
chair. It was the most dramatic thing I ever saw on a stage.
The orchestra struck up "Auld Lang Syne" and they gave three
cheers on the stage and in the house. The papers got out
special editions, and said it was the greatest theatrical
event there had ever been in London.
DICK.
