INTRODUCTION

My interest in John Davis was first aroused in a seminar course, "Problems in the Literary Relations of England and America from 1700 to 1850," when I read and reviewed his Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States.

Although Davis for a while figured with some prominence among American men of letters, it has been difficult to trace his movements in America, and his later years in England are almost completely shrouded in obscurity. The chief sources of information regarding him have been newspapers and periodicals of his day, in which poems and essays of his were published, various advertisements which he inserted from time to time, and critical comments upon his works; and the autobiographical material contained in his own books.

During the course of my investigations. I have visited the Harvard University Library, the Boston Public Library, the Boston Atheneum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the New York Public Library in quest of Davis's works and the magazines and newspapers to which he contributed.

I am indebted to Dr. Robert A. Law, of the University of Texas, for information concerning Davis's activities in South Carolina and especially to Dr. H. M. Ellis for his unceasing interest and kindness in helping me to search out and arrange my material.

CHAPTER I

EARLY YEARS: TRAVEL AND STUDY, 1774-1798

John Davis, traveller, poet, and romancer, was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, August 6, 1774.1 His parents, according to his baptismal record2 at the Church of Sarum St. Edmunds, were "Mr. James Davis and Mrs. Ann his wife." No mention is made in Davis's works of his father, who may have died early. The mother, Ann Davis, was living in 1802, having apparently removed from Salisbury a year or two before, to a new home overlooking the English Channel and the maneuvers of the British fleet, in the neighborhood of Southampton or Portsmouth, in the adjoining county of Hampshire. Besides John, there was at least one other son, James, of whom an account is given below. The family seems to have been at first in comfortable circumstances, if we may believe Davis's statement that he was "reared in the lap of opulence." Nevertheless, from certain somewhat slighting allusions to the local ecclesiastical aristocracy and from the remark that his people were not so fortunate as to live adjacent to the Cathedral Close at Salisbury, it may be judged that their social standing was not prominent. There are furthermore reasons for supposing that before 1790 the family fortunes. had declined somewhat.

The environment in which young Davis was brought up was one of the most famous of English cathedral towns. Though the woolen and cutlery industries of earlier years had fallen away, Salisbury remained the distributing center for a prosperous

'From the official records of Charterhouse, London, kindly furnished by the Secretary, Mr. H. S. Wright.

'March 20, 1775. So great a lapse of time between birth and baptism was unusual among Anglican families.

On his return voyage from America in 1802, Davis says, he landed at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, twelve miles from his mother's home.

This statement and all other data for Davis's life prior to 1798, unless otherwise accredited, are based upon the autobiographical introduction to his First Settlers of Virginia, repeated in the appendix of Captain Smith and the Princess Pocahontas, both published first in 1805.

agricultural district. The lofty spire and magnificent architecture of the cathedral dominated the rolling Wiltshire landscape and impressed its influence upon the lives of the townspeople. The region was rich in tradition and in memories of departed greatness. From Davis's later propensity for long walking trips, it can hardly be doubted that as a boy he had wandered about the great monuments of Stonehenge, only two hours' walk to the north of Salisbury, and that he had probably visited Winchester, another cathedral town and capital of the old West Saxon kingdom, to the east, or had rambled down the Avon, past the New Forest, for a sight of the Channel or to Southampton for a glimpse of the shipping in the Solent.

In this environment and under the influence of the extensive and well selected, if somewhat out-of-date, family library, it is not surprising that the youth's imagination should have been actively aroused and that he very early in life manifested a literary turn of mind. "From my infancy," he says, "I felt a disposition to write verse, and at the tender age of seven years scribbled an epigram upon my grandmother in a blank leaf of her prayer book." His precocious attempts in this direction, however, were not fostered by his family and associates. He adds, "I was always dissuaded by my friends from the pursuit of knowledge. They were not descendants from the family of the Medici. Literature would never have been indebted to them for its revival. Had they lived in the age of the barbarous Goths, I am certain they would have contended for the honor of destroying the Alexandrian collection of books."

Regarding his education, he writes, "It was never my fortune to repose under the shade of academic bowers. This, however, was not owing to the angusta res domi, or local conditions. Salisbury, my native place, boasts a grammar school that initiated Addison in the elegance of literature." The fundamentals of an education he presumably mastered through home instruction. At the age of eleven, his imagination had been excited

'The works which he had read in preparation for his "Short System of Self Education" (See below, in this chapter.) appear to belong mainly to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

"From "An Author's Midnight Thoughts," in the Charleston Daily Advertiser, September 24, 1799.

by the perusal of four books, the stories of Robert Drury and Captain Richard Falconer, The Unfortunate Englishman, and Pierre Vaud.

It is likely that the boy's desire for adventure was promoted by the necessity of both brothers seeking employment at an early age. The activities of the East India Company offered an enviable opportunity for employment combined with adventure, and accordingly Davis, at the age of fourteen, entered the Company's naval service and took passage as ship's boy on the Essex, Captain Strover, sailing from Gravesend for the East Indies and China. During the eighteen months' cruise, the vessel discharged stores at St. Helena, touched at the port of Batavia, in Java, and proceeded to Canton, where she remained four months, taking on cargo for the return voyage. The effect of so extensive a trip to strange quarters of the globe upon the mind of a susceptible and adventurous youth of fifteen can easily be imagined.

On returning to England, Davis learned that in his absence his brother had followed in his footsteps, enlisting as a cadet in the army for Indian service. He says of the later career of this brother:"

He was a considerable time Ensign to a battalion of native infantry at Kistnagerry, a hill fort in the Baramhal country. At the taking of Pondicherry he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant; he died a captain at Madrass [sic]. His account of the Sepoy soldier in India is full, elegant, and accurate; it was first communicated by him in a letter from India to the Editor of the European Magazine and adopted in the article "Sepoy" by compilers of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

This account of the Sepoy soldiers appeared in the European Magazine for August. 1795. An accompanying letter, signed J. D...s, is dated from Pondicherry, February 14, 1794. The writer is probably identical with the Lieutenant James Davis

"Robert Drury, (1687- ?), an English traveller; author of Madagascar, or Journal during Fifteen Years' Captivity on that Island.

'Probably William Falconer (1732-1769), author of The Shipwreck. Davis himself, either through faulty memory or for rhetorical heightening, gives the date of this voyage as 1787; and his age is implied as eleven.

"Preface to First Settlers of Virginia.