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O. Henry was the pseudonym of the American writer William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910). O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. William Sidney Porter was born on September 11, 1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. His middle name at birth was Sidney; he changed the spelling to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter (1825 – 1888), a physician, and Mary Jane Virginia Swaim Porter (1833 – 1865). They were married April 20, 1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels; his favorite work was One Thousand and One Nights. Porter
graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porter's elementary school in
1876. He then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt
continued to tutor him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started
working in his uncle's drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, he was licensed as a pharmacist. At the drugstore, he also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk. Porter traveled with Dr. James K. Hall to Texas in
March 1882, hoping that a change of air would help alleviate a
persistent cough he had developed. He took up residence on the sheep
ranch of Richard Hall, James' son, in La Salle County and helped out as a shepherd, ranch hand, cook and baby-sitter. While on the ranch, he learned bits of Spanish and German from the mix of immigrant ranch hands. He also spent time reading classic literature. Porter's health did improve and he traveled with Richard to Austin in
1884, where he decided to remain and was welcomed into the home of the
Harrells, who were friends of Richard's. Porter took a number of
different jobs over the next several years, first as pharmacist then as
a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began writing as a sideline. Porter
led an active social life in Austin, including membership in singing
and drama groups. Porter was a good singer and musician. He played both
the guitar and mandolin. He became a member of the "Hill City Quartet," a group of young men who sang at gatherings and serenaded young women of the town. Porter met and began courting Athol
Estes, then seventeen years old and from a wealthy family. Her mother
objected to the match because Athol was ill, suffering from tuberculosis. On July 1, 1887, Porter eloped with Athol to the home of Reverend R. K. Smoot, where they were married.
The
couple continued to participate in musical and theater groups, and
Athol encouraged her husband to pursue his writing. Athol gave birth to
a son in 1888, who died hours after birth, and then a daughter,
Margaret Worth Porter, in September 1889. Porter's friend Richard Hall
became Texas Land Commissioner and offered Porter a job. Porter started
as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office (GLO) in 1887 at a
salary of $100 a month, drawing maps from surveys and field notes. The salary was enough to support his family, but he continued his contributions to magazines and newspapers. In the GLO building,
he began developing characters and plots for such stories as "Georgia's
Ruling" (1900), and "Buried Treasure" (1908). The castle-like building
he worked in was even woven into some of his tales such as "Bexar Scrip
No. 2692" (1894). His job at the GLO was a political appointment by
Hall. Hall ran for governor in the election of 1890 but lost. Porter
resigned in early 1891 when the new governor was sworn in. The same
year, Porter began working at the First National Bank of Austin as a
teller and bookkeeper at the same salary he had made at the GLO. The
bank was operated informally and Porter had trouble keeping track of
his books. In 1894, he was accused by the bank of embezzlement and lost his job but was not indicted. He now worked full time on his humorous weekly called The Rolling Stone, which he started while working at the bank. The Rolling Stone featured
satire on life, people and politics and included Porter's short stories
and sketches. Although eventually reaching a top circulation of 1500, The Rolling Stone failed
in April 1895, perhaps because of Porter's poking fun at powerful
people. Porter also may have ceased publication as the paper never
provided the money he needed to support his family. By then, his
writing and drawings caught the attention of the editor at the Houston Post. Porter and his family moved to Houston in 1895, where he started writing for the Post.
His salary was only $25 a month, but it rose steadily as his popularity
increased. Porter gathered ideas for his column by hanging out in hotel
lobbies and observing and talking to people there. This was a technique
he used throughout his writing career. While he was in Houston, the
First National Bank of Austin was audited and the federal auditors
found several discrepancies. They managed to get a federal indictment
against Porter. Porter was subsequently arrested on charges of
embezzlement, charges which he denied, in connection with his
employment at the bank. Porter's
father-in-law posted bail to keep Porter out of jail, but the day
before Porter was due to stand trial on July 7, 1896, he fled, first to New Orleans and later to Honduras. While holed up in a Tegucigalpa hotel for several months, he wrote Cabbages and Kings, in which he coined the term "banana republic"
to describe the country, subsequently used to describe almost any
small, unstable tropical nation in Latin America. Porter had sent Athol
and Margaret back to Austin to live with Athol's parents.
Unfortunately, Athol became too ill to meet Porter in Honduras as
Porter had planned. When he learned that his wife was dying, Porter
returned to Austin in February 1897 and surrendered to the court,
pending an appeal. Once again, Porter's father-in-law posted bail so Porter could stay with Athol and Margaret. Athol
Estes Porter died on July 25, 1897, from tuberculosis (then known as
consumption). Porter, having little to say in his own defense, was
found guilty of embezzlement in February 1898, sentenced to five years
jail, and imprisoned on March 25, 1898, as federal prisoner 30664 at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio.
While in prison, Porter, as a licensed pharmacist, worked in the prison
hospital as the night druggist. Porter was given his own room in the
hospital wing, and there is no record that he actually spent time in
the cell block of the prison. He had fourteen stories published under
various pseudonyms while
he was in prison, but was becoming best known as "O. Henry", a
pseudonym that first appeared over the story "Whistling Dick's
Christmas Stocking" in the December 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine.
A friend of his in New Orleans would forward his stories to publishers,
so they had no idea the writer was imprisoned. Porter was released on
July 24, 1901, for good behavior after serving three years. Porter
reunited with his daughter Margaret, now age 11, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
where Athol's parents had moved after Porter's conviction. Margaret was
never told that her father had been in prison — just that he had been
away on business. Porter's most prolific writing period started in 1902, when he moved to New York City to be near his publishers. While there, he wrote 381 short stories. He wrote a story a week for over a year for the New York World Sunday Magazine.
His wit, characterization and plot twists were adored by his readers,
but often panned by critics. Porter married again in 1907, to childhood
sweetheart Sarah (Sallie) Lindsey Coleman, whom he met again after
revisiting his native state of North Carolina. However, despite the
success of his short stories being published in magazines and
collections (or perhaps because of the attendant pressure that success brought), Porter drank heavily. His health began to deteriorate in 1908, which affected his writing. Sarah left him in 1909, and Porter died on June 5, 1910, of cirrhosis of the liver, complications of diabetes and an enlarged heart. After funeral services in New York City, he was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina. His daughter, Margaret Worth Porter, died in 1927 and was buried with her father. O.
Henry's stories are famous for their surprise endings, to the point
that such an ending is often referred to as an "O. Henry ending." He
was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant.
Both authors wrote twist endings, but O. Henry stories were much more
playful and optimistic. His stories are also well known for witty
narration. Most of O. Henry's stories are set in his own time, the
early years of the 20th century. Many take place in New York City and
deal for the most part with ordinary people: clerks, policemen,
waitresses. Fundamentally
a product of his time, O. Henry's work provides one of the best
examples of catching the entire flavor of an age written in the English
language. Whether roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art
of the "gentle grafter," or investigating the tensions of class and
wealth in turn-of-the-century New York, O. Henry had an inimitable hand
for isolating some element of society and describing it with an
incredible economy and grace of language. Some of his best and
least-known work resides in the collection Cabbages and Kings, a
series of stories which each explore some individual aspect of life in
a paralytically sleepy Central American town while each advancing some
aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another in a complex
structure which slowly explicates its own background even as it
painstakingly erects a town which is one of the most detailed literary
creations of the period. The Four Million was his first collection of stories. It opens with a reference to Ward McAllister's
"assertion that there were only 'Four Hundred' people in New York City
who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen — the census taker — and
his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out
the field of these little stories of the 'Four Million.'" To O. Henry,
everyone in New York counted. He had an obvious affection for the city,
which he called "Bagdad-on-the-Subway," and many of his stories are set there — but others are set in small towns and in other cities. Among his most famous stories are: Porter gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name. In 1909 he gave an interview to The New York Times, in which he gave an account of it: It
was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O.
Henry. I said to a friend: "I'm going to send out some stuff. I don't
know if it amounts to much, so I want to get a literary alias. Help me
pick out a good one." He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a
name from the first list of notables that we found in it. In the
society columns we found the account of a fashionable ball. "Here we
have our notables," said he. We looked down the list and my eye lighted
on the name Henry, "That'll do for a last name," said I. "Now for a
first name. I want something short. None of your three-syllable names
for me." "Why don’t you use a plain initial letter, then?" asked my
friend. "Good," said I, "O is about the easiest letter written, and O
it is." A
newspaper once wrote and asked me what the O stands for. I replied, "O
stands for Olivier the French for Oliver." And several of my stories
accordingly appeared in that paper under the name Olivier Henry. Writer and scholar Guy Davenport offers another explanation: "[T]he pseudonym that he began to write under in prison is constructed from the first two letters of Ohio and the second and last two of penitentiary." (bold added) The O. Henry Award is
a prestigious annual prize named after Porter and given to outstanding
short stories. Several schools around the country bear Porter's
pseudonym. In 1952, a film featuring five stories, called O. Henry's Full House, was made. The episode garnering the most critical acclaim was "The Cop and the Anthem" starring Charles Laughton and Marilyn Monroe. The other stories are "The Clarion Call", "The Last Leaf", "The Ransom of Red Chief" (starring Fred Allen and Oscar Levant), and "The Gift of the Magi". The O. Henry House and O. Henry Hall,
both in Austin, Texas, are named for him. O. Henry Hall, now owned by
the University of Texas, previously served as the federal courthouse in
which O. Henry was convicted of embezzlement. |