Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published July 21, 2004

The mystery of O Henry

The seed for this column was planted because I used a quotation by O Henry in last year's Thanksgiving column. Soon after that column appeared I received a letter from Barbara Underwood. She explained she wanted to share her experience in trying to unravel a mystery that involved O Henry.

Underwood follows yard and garage sales and is also active in buying and selling on eBay. One day she purchased a 1917 text book for ten cents at a yard sale. Titled A Handbook on Story Writing the author's signature, Blanche Colton Williams, dated November 24, 1917, was followed by handwritten note to Shirley V. Long thanking her for being Williams' assistant in writing this book.

Intrigued by this personal touch Underwood was also dismayed that the book was in a stranger's hand rather than in one of the writer's families. Thus began a search and Underwood learned that Williams was the assistant professor of English at Hunter College in New York following her graduation from Mississippi University for Women in 1898. She became the founding editor of the O Henry Awards which continue today.

Although Underwood's research did not result in finding family members of the two women, she learned that Ms. Williams had a great interest in O Henry's writings. Known for his surprise endings O Henry remains the "father of the modern American short story." He has also been credited as pioneering the genre of the Western in American literature.

What a soap opera life this talented writer led. He was born William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, NC in 1862. Even though his father was a doctor, his mother died of TB, one of the great killers of that day, when the youngster was only three.

Porter was sent to live with an aunt and he was a handful to raise. He was a dreamer but an excellent student who amazed his teachers with his ability to do sums on one hand and draw cartoons with the other hand. His clever cartoons earned him a scholarship to a North Carolina college but money could not be found to buy books and supplies so he ended up as an apprentice pharmacist in his uncle's drug store.

He was 19 when he developed a hacking cough and because TB was always a possibility, when he had a chance to go to Texas to work on a sheep ranch he didn't hesitate. For Will Porter, Texas in the 1880s was filled with stories to be told and he stored ideas for the future.

After two years on the ranch he moved to Austin and became an amiable carouser running with the eligible young bachelors in town. A 19-year-old beauty interrupted that life and on July 1, 1887 he eloped with Athol Estes. Life became quieter and he took a job with the state until politics changed and he lost the job. Daughter Margaret was born in 1889 and TB reared its ugly head again because Athol had the disease and the pregnancy made it worse.

Porter dabbled in writing and sketching cartoons but he needed steady work and he was hired as a bank teller. Banking laws on the frontier were very lax but in 1894 a serious shortage was discovered by a bank examiner and Porter was accused of embezzlement.

His friends and fellow employees defended him but some people had doubts, knowing that he had started a weekly newspaper, the Rolling Stone, which he worked on at night. Although it did well at first he began losing advertisers and it was no secret that he needed money. Porter resigned from the bank but soon a grand jury cleared him of all charges.

The editor of The Houston Post had read his stories in the failed paper and offered him a job. In 1895 Will and his small family moved to Houston and his columns appeared regularly. On Valentine's Day, 1896 federal bank examiners arrested him after more intensive investigations and he was to appear at trial in Austin in July to be tried for embezzling $4,702.94.

Will boarded the train for Austin but at the first stop he left the train and boarded one headed for New Orleans. Once there, he caught a steamer and when it arrived in Honduras Porter, now a fugitive, took refuge there.

Next week - O Henry is born.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.