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A Comedy in Rubber
Our current featured story is ‘A Comedy in Rubber’ by the famed short story writer, O. Henry. I knew little of the man’s life prior to researching it for this introduction other than he loved surprise endings and his well recognized nom de plume was a vast improvement over his real name which was something arcane and stuffy like Crouton Swan Cunningham the seventh (In reality, it was William Sydney Porter).
When O. Henry was born in Greensboro, NC in September 1862, the town was a scrappy little textile mill community embroiled in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Although Greensboro didn’t play a major role in the early Civil War, it briefly served as the last capital of the Confederacy as Jefferson Davis’ government breezed through, set up shop and dreamed of becoming ex-pats in Turks and Caicos or some such remote tropical isle.
All of this leads us to an interesting question: Why was his father conceiving children in the winter of 1862 instead of fighting the war? Well, it turns out his father was a doctor and the Southern government figured his fingers would be better occupied doing something other than pulling triggers. His mother, tragically, succumbed to tuberculosis as the war ended and his father relocated his three year old son to be raised by his paternal grandmother.
O. Henry had a solid primary and secondary education, but did not receive a college degree. He did have a series of eclectic jobs including pharmacist, book keeper, draftsman, bank teller, sketch artist, and sheep herder. Although I could find no explicit mention of this, it seems likely his father may have thought it ironic if any of the sheep O. Henry herded were black.
Then, after falling in love with a wealthy Texan’s 17 year old daughter who was suffering from tuberculosis, Mr. Porter (showing a passionate rashness of judgment which, depending on your temperament, blessed or cursed the arc of his life) eloped with his teen bride.
All of the time, Porter wrote, performed in plays and composed satirical drawings. Then, while working a side job at the First Bank of Austin, Porter (depending on whose account you read) either employed some loose accounting standards or took some liberties with the till. Either way, he was indicted on charges of embezzlement. After his wealthy father-in-law bailed him out of jail, he did what most of us would do in that situation – he packed up his family and moved to Honduras.
While in Honduras, he coined the phrase ‘Banana Republic’ and watched as his wife become more and more ill from tuberculosis. Her conditioned worsened to the point where he was forced to put her welfare ahead of his desire to live as a free man. Tragically, she died shortly after they returned to the states and he was quickly found guilty of his crimes and sentenced to five years in prison.
O. Henry’s writing flourished in prison. After his release, he moved to New York and became the prodigious factory of fiction we now know and love. Porter married again in 1907, but his second wife left him because of his heavy drinking. He died in 1910 from cirrhosis. One can safely assume from the facts of his life that Porter was the embodiment of the passionate, self-possessed, and tortured artistic type.
He did give his fans some interesting stories in return, however. Sophisticates largely panned his work during his day and even now, but because of its enduring popularity his work has clearly proven it is of artistic merit and worth.
