5 June: Boreham on O. Henry

A Hoard of Cameos
Henry James once described O. Henry, whose birthday this is, as one of the greatest masters of modern literature. His subjects, James added, were treated with the skill of a Maupassant, and with a humour of which Maupassant never dreamed. O. Henry was once asked if he had read a certain sensational novel. He replied that he had no need; his own life was far more sensational than any novel could possibly be. A gaol-bird, an inveterate drunkard, and a man over whose transgressions of the moral code it is best to draw a veil, he outraged all the accepted canons of polite society. He was actually in prison, serving a sentence of five years for misappropriating the moneys of the bank in which he was employed, when he posted his first manuscripts to a publisher. His one title to our respect is based on the fact that he never gloried in his shame.

O. Henry's books may be searched in vain for a deeper note of pathos than the pathos of his own closing years. He spent them in New York. Everybody knew his sinister record; but everybody pretended not to know. O. Henry himself never, even in the most oblique way, referred to it; his most intimate friends set such a watch upon their lips that no hint of it was ever dropped. And so, although the grim ghost stood constantly in the midst of them, staring into all their faces and being stared at in return, they all affected ignorance of its presence, and behaved as though it were not there. In fairness to his reputation, it must be confessed that O. Henry was largely a victim of circumstances. He never knew a mother; she died when he was three. His father was an eccentric doctor who allowed his practice to go to rack and ruin while he grappled with the elusive problem of perpetual motion. The boy was left pretty much to his own devices. Through childhood and youth he followed his own sweet will, and, at 25, he eloped with a girl of 17. Both bride and bridegroom were tainted with consumption.

Receptive Mind Enriched By Colourful Career
O. Henry deserves to be remembered. He may never be numbered among the immortals; but in the high art of telling a capital story in a few words he has never been surpassed. He is a master of miniatures. In a way, fortune strangely favoured him. His life was crowded with out-of-the-way experiences and extraordinary adventures. If, after having been where he went, and seen what he saw, he could not tell a few thrilling and diverting tales, to whom could we look for such narratives? At the age of 18 his health was extremely precarious, and he was ordered South. He settled on a ranch in Texas. The life appealed to him. He revelled in the infinite variety of types which humanity assumed in those latitudes, and he enjoyed to the full the humorous and picturesque aspects of existence which every day presented themselves in some new and striking form. Moved by the instinct that eventually made him famous, he acquired the habit of scribbling descriptions of the variegated panorama on which, day by day, he was feasting his eyes.

He subsequently left the ranch and went gipsying through Central America. His stories show, as one of his most discerning critics points out, how the bizarre charm and the languorous beauty of the tropics fascinated him. How surely and deftly he writes of quaint towns, of exquisite senoritas dozing in hammocks, of dignified Spanish traders and shifty absconding criminals from the States, of picturesque comic-opera presidents of republics, and of gaudy generals with their mimicries! He was entertained in palaces and incarcerated in prisons; but it was all grist to his hungry mill. He wove all the comedies and tragedies of his life into the tales that he loved to tell.

The Art Of Seeing The Best In The Worst
Perhaps his most engaging qualities were his insights and courage. Some really desperate characters move across his pages. The reader shudders on making their acquaintance, but it is not long before he finds himself getting fond of them. O. Henry had a wonderful knack of discovering the gold that lay under the grime. His courage was simply invincible. He found himself in situations that would have broken the heart of any other man, but his gaiety never capitulated. He was dogged all his days by physical infirmity and broken health, but he maintained a buoyant spirit to the last. He died in a hospital; but even there, Arthur Clyne assures us, his twinkling humour declined to be eclipsed. When he lay on his deathbed, someone wished to turn down the light, knowing the end was near. "Don't put the light out," he murmured, cheerfully, "I'm afraid to go home in the dark," quoting the popular song that was, at the moment, all the rage. That was the man. "He felt," says Clyne, "and made us feel, the beauty of sacrifice, the value of honour, the virtue of truth, the sweetness of love, and the need of a great pity even as we smile."

O. Henry did more than any man of our time to remove the reproach that lay for so long upon the short story. The prejudice was as unjust as it was absurd. It is certain that, if there had been no short stories, there could never have been any long ones. Some of the most ponderous works of fiction are really volumes of short stories in disguise. Boccaccio in Italy, Marmontel in France, Hoffmann in Germany, Cervantes in Spain, and Dickens in England knew the art of constructing long stories out of short ones. When we reflect on the stories of "The Lost Sheep," "The Good Samaritan," "The Ten Virgins," "The Hidden Treasure," and "The Prodigal Son," we realise that short stories are among the choicest and most fruitful stories to which mortals have ever lent their ears. In this high art O. Henry was a pastmaster, and, for many years to come, no writer will attempt this attractive form of composition without studying, and to some extent emulating, his methods.

F W Boreham

Image: O. Henry