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OldWaldorf Bar Days
publisher of the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
would drop in
during his frequent New York sojourns.
Occasionally in the throng of long ago might be seen
Richard Harding Davis, the author, who, starting his
career as a newspaper reporter, became so successful as
a
fiction writer and novelist, that heaven knows how many
cub reporters of the period were impelled to emulate his
example! Davis' manner, partly acquired from familiar–
ity with London drawing-rooms and contacts with many
socially prominent as well as intelligent people in many
parts of the world, stamped him to many as a snob.
Knowing him well over a period of years, and now con–
fessing to have been among the cubs eager to follow in
his footsteps, I may mention that this was a sensitive
point with him. Particularly did it distress him that
many newspaper reporters looked askance at him. He
himself was disposed to be helpful to any newspaperman
to whom he thought he could do a favor. And if he saw in
a newspaper a stor y that struck him as particularly good,
he made a practice of writing to the editor and saying so.
Davis sometimes did curious things. He was romantic.
Once he and the young woman he was courting were an
ocean and more apart, and what did he do but send a
messenger boy from one side of the Atlantic to the
other- in fact, all the way from London to Chicago–
with a message, or package, for her!'That was back in
I
899. The boy, a lad by the name of Thomas Jaggers,
was taken up when he arrived here, entertained, and
showeredwith a publicity that mus't have proved startling
to him, and back in London. And possibly Davis's books
did not lose in sale on account of.the roman tic errand.
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