Ask any of a score of famed U. S. writers, "Who is Bob Davis?" and you will hear: "He published my first story"; "He kept me from starving"; "He gave me my only encouragement." Not authors alone, but many a prizefighter, statesman, explorer, doctor, will avow: "If Bob Davis wants my shirt, it's his." For of Robert Hobart Davis, editorial writer of the New York Sun, onetime associate editor of Munsey's, it is scant exaggeration to say he has "been everywhere, knows everybody." His column in the Sun headed "Bob Davis Recalls:" is an inexhaustible diary of encounters with the lofty and lowly in every part of the globe, a quarter century's wealth of colorful experience.
Last week Bob Davis (the only name he recognizes) lay on his back in Manhattan's Polyclinic Hospital recovering from leg injuries incurred on a fishing trip with his special crony Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb. His right ankle encased in an elephantine plaster cast (which he at once began making into an autograph album). Bob Davis received callers. Among the earliest arrivals was Fannie Hurst. When she departed, she sent 25 telegrams. In 48 hours arrived a score of manuscripts from famed authors. Soon the Sun's readers found on the editorial page, "Fannie Hurst Recalls:", "Irvin S. Cobb Recalls:", "Mary Roberts Rinehart Recalls:"— friends of Bob Davis pinch-hitting in his column. The list grew so long—Ben Ames Williams, Rex Ellingwood Beach, Newton Booth Tarkington, Ring W. Lardner, Sam Heilman, Sophie Kerr, Dorothy Canfield, Henry Louis Mencken, Montague Marsden Glass, George Ade, etc. etc.—that the Sun's Bob Davis column promised to become a complete parade of U. S. literati.
All the pinch-hitters last week "recalled" Davis himself, his generosity, kindness. patience, keenness, humor. Recalled Mrs. Rinehart: "Only Bob himself knows how many writers he has made, nursing them over the bad places, encouraging, cheering, criticizing." Mr. Cobb observed: "Mr. B. Davis is getting pretty brittle," and described how Davis turned his ankle on the houseboat deck, fell, fracturing two bones in the right ankle, tore ligaments and muscular fabric of the left knee.
Nebraska-born, Bob Davis learned the printer's trade in Nevada, news-reporting in San Francisco. In 1896 he went to Manhattan, joined Frank Andrew Munsey's staff in 1903, remained closely associated with the publisher until the latter's death in 1925. Later he became a director of the Munsey-owned Sun on a perpetual roving assignment, detailed by the Sun's President William Thompson Dewart who said: "My only instructions are that you see everything and write about it in your own vein. To you in the future, the whole earth is a local story."
In carrying out that mission, Bob Davis has traveled 130,000 mi., written 500 columns, four books, started a syndicate, added enormously to his remarkable collection of friends.