O. Henry

Biography

William Sidney Porter entered the world in Greensboro, North Carolina, on 11 September 1862, the son of a country doctor. Before he turned four, his mother was gone, and his childhood was stitched together by his grandmother and an aunt. Classroom doors closed behind him at fifteen; ledger books, tobacco counters, and a bank teller’s cage soon opened. In 1896 the bank balanced its books and found money missing—Porter’s signature beneath the shortfall. He caught a south-bound train to New Orleans, then a steamer to Honduras, but when word reached him that his wife was dying, he traded the tropics for a Texas jail cell. A jury needed little time: five years in the Ohio State Penitentiary, beginning 1898. Behind bars, Porter learned a new kind of escape. To keep his daughter Margaret fed, he began spinning tales, mailing them out under the name Olivier Henry—quickly trimmed to the crisper “O. Henry.” His first published escape route, “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking,” appeared in 1899; a dozen more followed before his early release for good behavior after thirty-six months. In 1902 he stepped off a train into Manhattan’s roar and never left. The New York World bought a fresh story from him nearly every week; publishers lined up for the overflow. Cabbages and Kings (1904) announced him, The Four Million (1906) crowned him, and between them stood “The Gift of the Magi,” a Christmas gift to literature that keeps re-wrapping itself every December. “The Ransom of Red Chief,” published 1910, still holds tourists for ransom on countless syllabi and has been filmed in 1911, 1963 (Soviet screens laughed at Leonid Gaidai’s version), 1986 (Ruthless People), and again in 1998. Silent projectors whirred even while he lived: The Sacrifice, Trying to Get Arrested, and His Duty all reached nickelodeons in 1909. Success poured faster than the whiskey he used to steady his nerves; the marriage he patched together in 1907 unraveled within twenty-four months. Cirrhosis, the final twist of the knife, closed the story on 5 June 1910 in a New York hospital bed. He was forty-seven. From the shadows of his pages rode another immortal: the Cisco Kid, part Robin Hood, part Don Quixote, galloped through magazines and later across the soundstages of The Arizona Kid (1930) and The Cisco Kid (1931). Nearly six hundred stories, one teasing turnaround after another, ensure that O. Henry’s trademark snap of surprise still echoes—proof that the best escapes are the ones made of words.