Adventures and Letters [23]
various members were seldom apart, and they extracted an enormous amount of fun out of life. I had recently settled in New York, and we had rooms at 10 East Twenty-eighth Street, where we lived very comfortably for many years. Indeed Richard did not leave them until his marriage in the summer of 1899. They were very pleasant, sunny rooms, and in the sitting-room, which Richard had made quite attractive, we gave many teas and supper-parties. But of all the happy incidents I can recall at the Twenty-eighth Street house, the one I remember most distinctly took place in the hallway the night that Richard received the first statement and check for his first book of short stories, and before the money had begun to come in as fast as it did afterward. We were on our way to dinner at some modest resort when we saw and at once recognized the long envelope on the mantel. Richard guessed it would be for one hundred and ninety dollars, but with a rather doubting heart I raised my guess to three hundred. And when, with trembling fingers, Richard had finally torn open the envelope and found a check for nine hundred and odd dollars, what a wild dance we did about the hall-table, and what a dinner we had that night! Not at the modest restaurant as originally intended, but at Delmonico's! It was during these days that Seymour Hicks and his lovely wife Ellaline Terriss first visited America, and they and Richard formed a mutual attachment that lasted until his death.
Richard had always taken an intense interest in the drama, and at the time he was managing editor of Harper's Weekly had made his first efforts as a playwright. Robert Hilliard did a one-act version of Richard's short story, "Her First Appearance," which under the title of "The Littlest Girl" he played in vaudeville for many years. E. H. Sothern and Richard had many schemes for writing a play together, but the only actual result they ever attained was a one-act version Sothern did at the old Lyceum of my brother's story, "The Disreputable Mr. Raegen." It was an extremely tense and absorbing drama, and Sothern was very fine in the part of Raegen, but for the forty-five minutes the playlet lasted Sothern had to hold the stage continuously alone, and as it preceded a play of the regulation length, the effort proved too much for the actor's strength, and after a few performances it was taken off. Although it was several years after this that my brother's first long play was produced he never lost interest in the craft of playwriting, and only waited for the time and means to really devote himself to it.
BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891. DEAR FAMILY:--
This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that my head is still its normal size, although I have at last found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York. The Fairchilds' dinner was a tremendous affair, and I was conquered absolutely by Mr. Howells, who went far, far out of his way to be as kind and charming as an old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet me. And everybody came, principally owing to the "Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it made me pretty near weep. Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never goes any place, to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes. "I was on in that scene." In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S----s but made a point not to as he was talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs. Fairchild and I agreed to be the only people in Boston who had not clasped his hand. There were only a few people present and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I thought very characteristic of the city. To-day I posed again and Cumnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the Clubs where I met some very nice boys and felt
Richard had always taken an intense interest in the drama, and at the time he was managing editor of Harper's Weekly had made his first efforts as a playwright. Robert Hilliard did a one-act version of Richard's short story, "Her First Appearance," which under the title of "The Littlest Girl" he played in vaudeville for many years. E. H. Sothern and Richard had many schemes for writing a play together, but the only actual result they ever attained was a one-act version Sothern did at the old Lyceum of my brother's story, "The Disreputable Mr. Raegen." It was an extremely tense and absorbing drama, and Sothern was very fine in the part of Raegen, but for the forty-five minutes the playlet lasted Sothern had to hold the stage continuously alone, and as it preceded a play of the regulation length, the effort proved too much for the actor's strength, and after a few performances it was taken off. Although it was several years after this that my brother's first long play was produced he never lost interest in the craft of playwriting, and only waited for the time and means to really devote himself to it.
BOSTON, January 22nd, 1891. DEAR FAMILY:--
This is just to say that I am alive and sleepy, and that my head is still its normal size, although I have at last found one man in Boston who has read one of my stories, and that was Barrymore from New York. The Fairchilds' dinner was a tremendous affair, and I was conquered absolutely by Mr. Howells, who went far, far out of his way to be as kind and charming as an old man could be. Yesterday Mrs. Whitman gave a tea in her studio. I thought she meant to have a half dozen young people to drink a cup with her, and I sauntered in in the most nonchalant manner to find that about everybody had been asked to meet me. And everybody came, principally owing to the "Harding Davis" part of the name for they all spoke of mother and so very dearly that it made me pretty near weep. Everybody came from old Dr. Holmes who never goes any place, to Mrs. "Jack" Gardner and all the debutantes. "I was on in that scene." In the evening I went with the Fairchilds to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe's to meet the S----s but made a point not to as he was talking like a cad when I heard him and Mrs. Fairchild and I agreed to be the only people in Boston who had not clasped his hand. There were only a few people present and Mrs. Howe recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which I thought very characteristic of the city. To-day I posed again and Cumnock took me over Cambridge and into all of the Clubs where I met some very nice boys and felt