Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and I'm Holly Fry. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid growing up in North Carolina, anytime we
Speaker 1: had an Oh Henry short story to read an English class,
Speaker 1: which was definitely more than once, the teacher would point
Speaker 1: out that he was from Greensboro. I didn't live in Greensboro,
Speaker 1: but that was not too too far from where we lived,
Speaker 1: so it was just this kind of point of pride.
Speaker 1: So I was totally surprised recently when I stumbled over
Speaker 1: a passing reference to Oh Henry. I think it might
Speaker 1: have been while I was researching the Joshua Slocum episode,
Speaker 1: Like it was just something that came about randomly while
Speaker 1: researching something else, this passing reference to how Oh Henry
Speaker 1: at that time had just gotten back from Honduras, where
Speaker 1: he had fled to avoid prosecution for embezzlement, and I
Speaker 1: was like, excuse me, what, Oh Henry did? What? Now?
Speaker 1: My English teachers never said anything about this. So since
Speaker 1: one of Oh Henry's most famous short stories is Gift
Speaker 1: of the Magi, which is all about Christmas, and gift
Speaker 1: giving during hard times, and he also wrote some other
Speaker 1: lesser known Christmas stories as well. I thought that he
Speaker 1: might make an interesting addition to our Winter holiday catalog
Speaker 1: this year. Oh Henry was born William Sydney Porter on
Speaker 1: September sixty two in Greensboro, North Carolina, just a couple
Speaker 1: of years before the end of the U. S. Civil War.
Speaker 1: His parents, Algernon Sydney and Mary Virginia Swain. Porter spelled
Speaker 1: his middle name Sydney s I d N E. Why,
Speaker 1: and he changed the eye to a hy later in
Speaker 1: his life. In eighteen sixty five, William's mother died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and his newborn baby brother also died not long after that.
Speaker 1: And this seems to have just really deeply affected Algernon Porter.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not surprising, but this effect on him
Speaker 1: was really profound. He was a doctor, but in the
Speaker 1: years after this happened, he started to really struggle with
Speaker 1: alcohol abuse, and he spent more and more of his
Speaker 1: time not practicing medicine but trying to invent things, including
Speaker 1: a perpetual motion machine that he seemed absolutely sure that
Speaker 1: he could get working. People described this as just a
Speaker 1: true fixation as Aldrenon's medical practice crumbled, william and his
Speaker 1: older brother were placed in the care of their grandmother,
Speaker 1: Ruth Porter and their aunt, Evelina Porter. Evelina was known
Speaker 1: as Lena, and she ran a small school called Miss Lena's.
Speaker 1: Williams started attending this school in eighteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 1: although he was an avid reader, his time at his
Speaker 1: aunt's school would be his only formal education. He left
Speaker 1: at fifteen to start working so he could help support
Speaker 1: the family. In eighteen seventy nine, he got a job
Speaker 1: at his uncle's drug store, W. C. Portering Company, and
Speaker 1: he started out as a bookkeeper, but over time he
Speaker 1: started getting experience in the pharmacy. In eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: he became part of the first group of druggists to
Speaker 1: be licensed by the state of North Carolina after the
Speaker 1: state passed its first law requiring licensure. In addition to
Speaker 1: his work at the pharmacy, Porter used his time at
Speaker 1: the drug store to observe people and to hear and
Speaker 1: tell stories, and he developed a reputation as a practical joker.
Speaker 1: He also drew cartoons and caricatures and started writing short
Speaker 1: vignettes about the people he met at the store. He
Speaker 1: also developed a chronic cough, and given that his mother
Speaker 1: and brother had both died of tuberculosis, people started to
Speaker 1: worry about his health. In eight eight two, Dr James Hall,
Speaker 1: one of the regulars at the store, invited Porter to
Speaker 1: accompany the Hall family to Texas, where they bought a ranch.
Speaker 1: The idea was that the Texas climate might be better
Speaker 1: for his lungs. Porter spent the next couple of years
Speaker 1: working on a sheep ranch in Catulla, Texas, but ranch
Speaker 1: life was a little too remote for him, so in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four he moved to Austin, where he worked
Speaker 1: at a series of assorted jobs, including another stint as
Speaker 1: a pharmacist, that time at Morley drug Store. In his
Speaker 1: free time, he joined the Hill City Quartet, where he
Speaker 1: sang as a tenor and he learned Spanish and reportedly
Speaker 1: memorized a dictionary. In eighteen eighty five, then twenty three
Speaker 1: year old Porter met seventeen year old athel Sts Roach.
Speaker 1: Two years later, in July of eighteen eighty seven, they eloped.
Speaker 1: Also in eighteen eighty seven, Porter put his drawing skills
Speaker 1: to work as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty eight, his wife gave birth to a
Speaker 1: baby boy, who sadly died as a newborn. The Porters
Speaker 1: had a daughter named Margaret about a year later, but
Speaker 1: Porter's presence in their lives was a little erratic. He
Speaker 1: had spent his first years in Austin as a bachelor,
Speaker 1: and after becoming a husband and a father, he still
Speaker 1: seemed to want to spend his time carousing and socializing.
Speaker 1: He said that this worked as inspiration for his writing.
Speaker 1: He also started making his own absinthe uh new time
Speaker 1: travel destinations included the absent part for Holly as a
Speaker 1: holiday treat, hooray a gift for me. In one Porter
Speaker 1: got a job at the first National Bank of Austin
Speaker 1: when the family moved into the home that would eventually
Speaker 1: become the O. Henry Museum. He had kept writing and
Speaker 1: drawing during all of this In he started his own
Speaker 1: publication called The Rolling Stone. This paper satirized local people
Speaker 1: in events, and it became pretty popular with more than
Speaker 1: one thousand subscribers when Austin's population was only about fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand people. But Porter could not get it to turn
Speaker 1: a profit and it folded within a year. Also in
Speaker 1: Federal Bank Examiner B. F. Gray inspected the books at
Speaker 1: First National Bank of Austin and found some problems, including
Speaker 1: discrepancies totaling more than four thousand, seven hundred dollars. Porter's
Speaker 1: work as a teller made him the prime suspect. In general,
Speaker 1: the way that the bank was handling money was incredibly sloppy.
Speaker 1: Often no one balanced the books at the end of
Speaker 1: the day. Bank officers liked to lend themselves money from
Speaker 1: the registers, sometimes leaving an IOU but sometimes not, and
Speaker 1: random people would fill in for the tellers when they
Speaker 1: were at lunch or on another break. So with all
Speaker 1: of that in mind, at first a grand jury found
Speaker 1: that there just wasn't enough evidence to indict anybody, but
Speaker 1: Gray pushed for additional scrutiny at the bank that led
Speaker 1: to the discovery of other suspicious transactions and another thousand
Speaker 1: or so dollars of missing funds. After that discovery, William
Speaker 1: Sidney Porter was indicted for embezzling. By this point, though
Speaker 1: he had already resigned from the position at the bank,
Speaker 1: he had not been worked in there for several months,
Speaker 1: and he had moved to Houston after being offered a
Speaker 1: job at the Houston Post. Porter's trial date was set
Speaker 1: for July seven, and on July six, he boarded a
Speaker 1: train bound for Austin, but he only made about fifty
Speaker 1: miles of that journey. In Hampstead, Texas, he left the
Speaker 1: train and instead boarded another one bound for New Orleans, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: If Porter ever explained to anybody what he was thinking
Speaker 1: or why he decided to jump bail, they kept that
Speaker 1: information to themselves. Given how haphazard the bank's bookkeeping had been,
Speaker 1: There's been some suggestion that he probably would have been
Speaker 1: acquitted if he had stood trial in like he was
Speaker 1: supposed to. It's possible that he was afraid that the
Speaker 1: bank's management was going to make him into a scapegoat,
Speaker 1: or that he was just in crisis mode and really
Speaker 1: not thinking clearly. Really, though, this whole stretch of his
Speaker 1: story gets pretty murky, and we'll talk about that after
Speaker 1: we pause for a sponsor break. At some point after
Speaker 1: getting to New Orleans, William Sidney Porter boarded a ship
Speaker 1: bound for Hunduras, possibly because Honduras had no extradition treaty
Speaker 1: with the United States. According to al Jennings, when Porter
Speaker 1: got to under US, he stayed in the US consulate
Speaker 1: in tru Hillo, which is on the country's northeastern coast.
Speaker 1: You can't exactly call Jennings a reliable source, though he
Speaker 1: had been an attorney in Oklahoma. Before he and his
Speaker 1: brother Frank decided they would become outlaws. They tried to
Speaker 1: rob trains, which they were not particularly good at. At
Speaker 1: one point, they tried to dynamite open a safe, but
Speaker 1: instead blew the baggage car and everything in it to smithereens.
Speaker 1: I feel like there are a number of those stories
Speaker 1: in the train robbing era of the United States in particular. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as I was writing that, I was like, have we
Speaker 1: talked about this train robbing on the show? Because it
Speaker 1: sounds very familiar. Yes. Eventually they made their way to
Speaker 1: Central America, according to the book that Jennings published in
Speaker 1: two which was called Through the Shadows with Oh Henry
Speaker 1: Porter and the Jennings brothers met in Trhio, and then
Speaker 1: they got involved in a Fourth of July shoot out
Speaker 1: the next day, and then they had to flee by
Speaker 1: boat before taking a wandering trek to San Francisco by
Speaker 1: way of Mexico City. At one point in this book,
Speaker 1: Jennings describes a plan to rob a bank in San
Speaker 1: Antonio so that he can afford to buy a ranch.
Speaker 1: He insists that Porter has quote neither recklessness nor the
Speaker 1: sang fuad of a lawbreaker, but tries to get him
Speaker 1: involved anyway. After firing jennings gun into the ground by accident,
Speaker 1: Porter says, quote, I think I would be a hindrance
Speaker 1: on this financial undertaking. When Jennings suggests that Porter might
Speaker 1: just hold the horses while everyone else robs the bank,
Speaker 1: Porter says he doesn't think that he could even do that,
Speaker 1: and soon the men part ways. That's all a little
Speaker 1: far fetched, especially since Porter headed for New Orleans on
Speaker 1: July six, meaning that he could not have already been
Speaker 1: in Honduras for that July fourth gunfight. Porter had been
Speaker 1: on the run for about six months when he got
Speaker 1: word that his wife was seriously ill. She had started
Speaker 1: business school with the hope of being able to support
Speaker 1: herself and their daughter, but she had tuberculosis like so
Speaker 1: many other people in the story, and it suddenly got
Speaker 1: much worse. Porter decided to return to the United States,
Speaker 1: knowing that when he did, he would have to stand trial.
Speaker 1: Federal Prosecutor R. U. Culberson seems to have viewed Porter
Speaker 1: with some sympathy. Initially, Culburson hadn't thought the case against
Speaker 1: him was even worth pursuing, but Gray had been insistent
Speaker 1: about it. Culberson allowed the court proceedings to be postponed
Speaker 1: until after Ethel Porter's death on July seven, at the
Speaker 1: age of twenty nine. Porter's trial started on February. The
Speaker 1: original charges had been narrowed down to three. They covered
Speaker 1: an amount of money just shy of six hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: On February seventeenth, the jury found Porter guilty on all
Speaker 1: three counts. There is still some debate about all of this, though,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, the bank's bookkeeping was frankly a mess.
Speaker 1: One of the charges was related to a transaction that
Speaker 1: had happened on November twelve, which was months after Porter
Speaker 1: left the bank and moved to Houston. Documentation of the
Speaker 1: trial itself is also sketchy, but Porter reportedly seemed detached
Speaker 1: from the whole thing and barely even participated in his
Speaker 1: own defense. Yeah, in this place in time, it was
Speaker 1: not common to just fully transcribe the entire trial, so
Speaker 1: there's no transcript of it. But that's how he's been described.
Speaker 1: So interpretations of all this run along kind of a
Speaker 1: big spectrum. At one end, Porter embezzled from the bank,
Speaker 1: possibly to try to get money to fund the Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: and then his trial was handled fairly. Then at the
Speaker 1: other end, either he took the blame for other bank
Speaker 1: employees actions, or he was doing the same things that
Speaker 1: they were doing, but it was the only one who
Speaker 1: got charged with a crime because of it. One of
Speaker 1: his friends, John Maxie, later said he thought that Porter
Speaker 1: did take the money but intended to pay it back,
Speaker 1: just like everybody else at the bank who kept helping
Speaker 1: themselves to unofficial loans. I just can't even imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you work at a bank today, you definitely cannot
Speaker 1: just take some money over the out of the till
Speaker 1: and leave a little note there. I just need this overnight.
Speaker 1: I swear I'm gonna bring it back tomorrow outside of court.
Speaker 1: Porter maintained his innocence in a letter to his mother.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, I am absolutely innocent of wrongdoing in
Speaker 1: that bank matter. I care not so much for the
Speaker 1: opinion of the general public, but I would have a
Speaker 1: few of my friends still believe there is good in me.
Speaker 1: In a letter to J. L. Watson, business manager at
Speaker 1: the Houston Post, he said, quote, I want to state
Speaker 1: to you that the charges against me are not only unfounded,
Speaker 1: but are I think the work of spite as well.
Speaker 1: Porter was sentenced to five years in prison, and he
Speaker 1: started his incarceration at Ohio State Penitentiary on. He was
Speaker 1: profoundly ashamed about this. He desperately wanted to shield his daughter, Margaret,
Speaker 1: who at the time was eight years old, from the
Speaker 1: truth about what had happened. He got his mother in
Speaker 1: law to agree to send Margaret to live on a
Speaker 1: relative's farm in Tennessee, to like just keep her out
Speaker 1: of the public eye and away from gossip. He was
Speaker 1: nearly despondent when his sentence started, and he used his
Speaker 1: letters to Margaret as a way to try to keep
Speaker 1: himself going. Also incarcerated with him was Dunt Dun dune
Speaker 1: Al Jennings, who had been sentenced to life in prison
Speaker 1: in conjunction with the train robbery that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: Later on, he would be pardoned by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: Whether jennings account of their earlier time together is true,
Speaker 1: it does seem that they were friends while incarcerated. Theo
Speaker 1: Henry story holding up a train starts with a note
Speaker 1: that it's the words of an outlaw in the Southwest,
Speaker 1: which was probably Al Jennings. Both Porter and Jennings described
Speaker 1: conditions at the prison as deeply inhumane, and letters to
Speaker 1: his in laws, Porter wrote about outbreaks of typhus, measles,
Speaker 1: and tuberculosis, as well as frequent suicides among the incarcerated men.
Speaker 1: He also described overcrowding, frequent beatings, and rancid and rotten food.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Porter was treated relatively leniently, becoming
Speaker 1: the overnight pharmacist at the prisons hospital. He was also
Speaker 1: credited with saving the warden's life after he was given
Speaker 1: an accidental overdose of Fowler Solution, which was an arsenic
Speaker 1: compound that was used as a general tonic. Porter reportedly
Speaker 1: mixed something in the pharmacy that acted as an antidote.
Speaker 1: If I had to guess, I would say it was charcoal. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Porter was given a clerical position working for the prison steward,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to leave the prison unaccompanied and to
Speaker 1: be housed outside of it. He and other men in
Speaker 1: similar situations formed what they called the Recluse Club. I
Speaker 1: should have just asked you about the arsenic antidote, because
Speaker 1: I forgot that You've just been working on an entire
Speaker 1: podcast about poisoners, which is like arsenic poison so gradual.
Speaker 1: While he was incarcerated, Porter got onto a better emotional
Speaker 1: footing and he started to write more. He always used
Speaker 1: a pen name, and then he passed his stories through
Speaker 1: a series of intermediaries before they were sent into publishers
Speaker 1: to try to conceal his identity and his connection to
Speaker 1: the prison. This was when he published under the name
Speaker 1: oh Henry for the first time. That was Whistling Dick's
Speaker 1: Christmas Stocking, which appeared under that byline in McClure's. At first,
Speaker 1: Porter was using several pen names, and it's not clear
Speaker 1: why he eventually stuck with Oh Henry, or even where
Speaker 1: that name came from. Biographers cite all kinds of possibilities.
Speaker 1: Maybe it came from the United States Dispensary, which listed
Speaker 1: a French pharmacist named Etienne Ossian Henry Are. Or maybe
Speaker 1: the family had a cat named Henry and they would
Speaker 1: call it by saying, oh Henry. Yeah. You can find
Speaker 1: many biographers authoritatively and confidently saying completely different contradictory stories.
Speaker 1: I feel like that cat one, and I want to
Speaker 1: be like, I hope you're wearing comfortable shoes, because that
Speaker 1: seems like a long walk. Porter was released from prison
Speaker 1: with time off for good behavior on July nine, o one.
Speaker 1: He was too ashamed to go back to Texas, so
Speaker 1: he went to Pittsburgh. That's where his mother in law
Speaker 1: had moved with his daughter. He stayed with them for
Speaker 1: a while and he got a job at a newspaper,
Speaker 1: but eventually he moved into a boarding house. Although he
Speaker 1: said this was because he had to keep erratic hours
Speaker 1: for his job and he didn't want to disturb everybody,
Speaker 1: it also just seems like he wanted some space. He
Speaker 1: impresses me as a man that just like just didn't
Speaker 1: really want to be tied down. Ever, I think family
Speaker 1: life probably did not agree with his disposition. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen o two, Porter moved to New
Speaker 1: York City, and when he got there, he started going
Speaker 1: by Oh Henry all the time, not just as a byeline.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that a little bit more after
Speaker 1: we have a sponsor break. Oh Henry loved New York City.
Speaker 1: He seemed endlessly curious about its neighborhoods and the people
Speaker 1: who lived in them. He loved to talk to people
Speaker 1: about their lives, with those conversations informing his short stories,
Speaker 1: and as has always been the case, he loved to socialize,
Speaker 1: especially with women. One of his favorite pastimes was to
Speaker 1: meet a young women working in a shop somewhere, treat
Speaker 1: her to dinner, and then find out all about her life,
Speaker 1: with tidbits of those lives making their way into his writing.
Speaker 1: For his first couple of years in New York, most
Speaker 1: of oh Henry's stories were mostly set in the Southwest
Speaker 1: and Central America. His novel Cabbages and Kings came out
Speaker 1: in nineteen o four, although he described it not as
Speaker 1: a novel but as quote a few of my South
Speaker 1: American stories strung on a read. Cabbages and Kings is
Speaker 1: set in a fictitious country called the Republic of Anchuria,
Speaker 1: but it is very clearly based on his time in Honduras.
Speaker 1: Before long, though New York City became a major focus
Speaker 1: of oh Henry's writing. In nineteen o five and nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, he wrote more than a hundred and ten
Speaker 1: news stories and about nine percent of them were set
Speaker 1: in New York. That is more than two stories a week,
Speaker 1: and at some points, Oh, Henry's output went even beyond that.
Speaker 1: In nineteen o three, he signed a contract with The
Speaker 1: New York World to write a story every week for
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars each. This contract was not exclusive, though,
Speaker 1: and he wrote for other publications, including Harper's, Ainslie's, and McClure's.
Speaker 1: At some points he was writing a short story every
Speaker 1: single day, and these were not necessarily all day projects.
Speaker 1: The Gift of the Magi, which is probably his most
Speaker 1: famous work today, reportedly went from idea to finished work
Speaker 1: in about two hours because he forgot that he hit
Speaker 1: a need to write a Christmas story for the New
Speaker 1: York Sunday World. Yeah. I love it that speed, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a lot of writing. It's so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, short stories are not easy necessarily to write.
Speaker 1: They were for him. Uh. That speed that he put
Speaker 1: to great use for a long time started to decline
Speaker 1: by seven though, as he developed serrhosis and diabetes. On
Speaker 1: November twenty of that year, at the age of forty five.
Speaker 1: He also got married again to thirty nine year old
Speaker 1: Sarah Lindsay Coleman, They had known each other in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and Sarah's mother had written to tell her that her
Speaker 1: old friend will had been making a living as a
Speaker 1: writer in New York. They reconnected through letters, and after
Speaker 1: they married, Sarah moved to New York to be with him.
Speaker 1: He had really tried to keep anyone from finding out
Speaker 1: that short story writer oh Henry and Convicted and besler
Speaker 1: William Sidney Porter were the same person, including his daughter Margaret,
Speaker 1: who apparently only found out about all of this after
Speaker 1: his death, But he told Sarah the entire story before
Speaker 1: they got married. Was marriage had some ups and downs,
Speaker 1: though Sarah kept trying to get him to give up
Speaker 1: some of his drinking and carousing so that he could
Speaker 1: she hoped, live a longer and healthier life. Eventually, though,
Speaker 1: she became disillusioned enough with this that she went back
Speaker 1: to western North Carolina. As his health deteriorated, she convinced
Speaker 1: him to travel there for several months in nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and while he spent some time in a sanitarium, he
Speaker 1: just found like the Asheville and surrounding area atmosphere to
Speaker 1: be way too quiet. He missed the bustle of New York,
Speaker 1: and he did not stay in North Carolina for long.
Speaker 1: Oh Henry died of cirrhosis complicated by diabetes and an
Speaker 1: enlarged heart on June five, nineteen ten, at the age
Speaker 1: of forty seven. Sarah had heard that he was seriously
Speaker 1: ill and had been on her way to New York
Speaker 1: when he died. His last words were reportedly said to
Speaker 1: the night nurse after she turned off the lights in
Speaker 1: his room. Turn on the light, I'm afraid to go
Speaker 1: home in the dark. Sarah brought his body back to
Speaker 1: North Carolina, where he was buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville.
Speaker 1: When his daughter, Margaret died of tuberculosis in she was
Speaker 1: cremated and her ashes were buried at his feet. Oh
Speaker 1: Henry had been prolific and widely read, but it was
Speaker 1: really after his death at his popularity skyrocketed. His fame
Speaker 1: spread internationally during World War One as American soldiers took
Speaker 1: his work to Europe. As one reviewer described it, quote,
Speaker 1: oh Henry was our greatest literary discovery during the war.
Speaker 1: He was medicinal. He distracted us from intolerable things. His
Speaker 1: name is as familiar as Kipling, Conan Doyle, or Jacobs.
Speaker 1: That's just in case she did not know W. W. Jacob's,
Speaker 1: author of the short story The Monkey's Paw. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: felt like Kipling and Conan Doyle are still well known
Speaker 1: enough to not need to clarify, but not necessarily Jacob's
Speaker 1: Jacob's merits and merits in a side. Oh Henry's stories
Speaker 1: were published as collections, and one soldier described how anytime
Speaker 1: someone got one in a package from home, it would
Speaker 1: be torn into its component story so that several people
Speaker 1: could read at once. Porter's skill was also recognized by
Speaker 1: other writers. J. M. Barry wrote a letter to Sarah
Speaker 1: Coleman Porter that read, in part quote, I have just
Speaker 1: been reading some of your late husband's books and I'm captivated.
Speaker 1: If I had discovered him before his death, I should
Speaker 1: have considered a trip to the United States well worthwhile
Speaker 1: to make his acquaintance. As for why his works were
Speaker 1: so popular, Oh Henry playbood language, writing short stories that
Speaker 1: packed in a lot of irony, dark humor, wit, and
Speaker 1: word play. Most of the time, all of this came
Speaker 1: together in some kind of twist ending brought about by
Speaker 1: a coincidence or crossed wires or a missed connection. This
Speaker 1: kind of ending became synonymous with oh Henry. Often, the
Speaker 1: main characters were working people, poor people, vagabonds, people down
Speaker 1: on their luck, people that readers, especially white readers, often
Speaker 1: identified with His entry in the Dictionary of American Biography
Speaker 1: dating back to the thirties describes it this way, quote
Speaker 1: His stories do not indicate a preference for great virtues
Speaker 1: or high intelligence or distinguished persons. They do not show
Speaker 1: him preferring wit to dulness, beauty to plainness, industry to idleness,
Speaker 1: intensity to casual nous. Anybody can be the hero of
Speaker 1: a no Henry episode, provided the right events happened to him.
Speaker 1: Nobody reading the stories ever felt shut out from the
Speaker 1: world in which they happen. Though the plots may be fantastic,
Speaker 1: they are no more so than the little miracles which
Speaker 1: most men and women hope or fear will occur to them.
Speaker 1: The characters are familiar and simple. They live, love, work, play,
Speaker 1: and die with nothing demanded of them except to be
Speaker 1: decent and kind. The rest is accident, so it's not
Speaker 1: entirely accurate to say that nobody has ever felt shut
Speaker 1: out from oh Henry's stories, Though some of those stories
Speaker 1: hold up today and those that don't probably would not
Speaker 1: have raised eyebrows among most white readers when they were written.
Speaker 1: But many oh Henry stories uncritically incorporate racist characters, language,
Speaker 1: or stereotypes, and some of it's just casually thrown in
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't have any bearing on the
Speaker 1: actual story. One of his most well known stories today
Speaker 1: is Ransom of Red Chief, which among other things, uses
Speaker 1: the N word as part of the description for a rock.
Speaker 1: The Red Chief reference to the title is a little
Speaker 1: boy whose behavior is like a truly extreme version of
Speaker 1: Dennis the Menace, whose manner of quote playing Indian is
Speaker 1: also heavily stereotyped. Yeah, we definitely read Ransom of Red
Speaker 1: Chief in school, and when I reread it working on
Speaker 1: this episode, I was like, WHOA, I did not remember
Speaker 1: the in word being in this in school, which might
Speaker 1: have been expurgated from what we read. But anyway, Oh
Speaker 1: Henry's depiction of women could also be troubling at best.
Speaker 1: For example, the story a Harlem Tragedy, which was written
Speaker 1: to be comedic romanticized, is a physically abusive marriage, with
Speaker 1: one of the characters forlornly wondering why her husband does
Speaker 1: not love her enough to beat her. And this is
Speaker 1: also a case where the setting of this story has
Speaker 1: different connotations now than it would have back when he
Speaker 1: wrote it. When oh Henry died in only about ten
Speaker 1: percent of Harlem's population was black, but within a decade
Speaker 1: that was shifting dramatically with the Harlem Renaissance, which was
Speaker 1: also known as the New Negro movement, stretching through the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and thirties. By the nineteen forties, oh henry
Speaker 1: short stories were really starting to fall out of favor.
Speaker 1: This wasn't so much about changing attitudes related to the
Speaker 1: issues we just discussed, though, It was really more about
Speaker 1: changing literary conventions and tastes. Critics started describing his writing
Speaker 1: as formulaic and overly discursive and embellished, writing him off
Speaker 1: as only inconsequential works of light humor ment for popular appeal.
Speaker 1: Oh Henry's legacy has continued though. In ninety two, five
Speaker 1: of his short stories were filmed and released as a
Speaker 1: film called Oh Henry's Full House. The stories were The
Speaker 1: Cop and the Anthem, The Clarion Call, The Last Leaf,
Speaker 1: The Ransom of Red Chief, and The Gift of the Magi.
Speaker 1: The Cisco Kid who is a character created by oh
Speaker 1: Henry also made his way into a number of television
Speaker 1: shows and movies. There are also schools named after him
Speaker 1: and several of the places where he lived, as well
Speaker 1: as the oh Henry Hotel in Greensboro, North Carolina, and
Speaker 1: oh Henry's in Asheville, which is North Carolina's oldest gay bar.
Speaker 1: The pen O Henry Prize as an annual award for
Speaker 1: the best English language short stories published in the US
Speaker 1: or Canada. The Oh Henry Candy Bar, if you're wondering,
Speaker 1: is apparently not related to the writer Oh Henry at all,
Speaker 1: and has similarly incredibly mysterious name origins about who decided
Speaker 1: to name it that and why. There have also been
Speaker 1: various attempts to have oh Henry posthumously pardoned. None of
Speaker 1: those have been granted. So I picked this topic for December,
Speaker 1: like I said up at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: because of Oh Henry's Christmas stories, and we have not
Speaker 1: really talked about them. So heads up, we're about to
Speaker 1: spoil the endings of some hundred plus year old short stories.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. I think the window is closed at that point.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry. But as we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking was the first story published under
Speaker 1: the name Oh Henry, and in it professional tramp and
Speaker 1: expert whistler with sling. Dick is trying to make his
Speaker 1: way through a town that arrests vagrance on site, and
Speaker 1: after a stern warning from a police officer whose German
Speaker 1: accent rendered as text is very hard to reach, Dick
Speaker 1: picks up a stocking that falls from a parcel in
Speaker 1: a passing wagon. Yeah, and the story Oh Henry does
Speaker 1: the same thing that I talked about not enjoying bram
Speaker 1: Stoker doing right, I think in our Dracula or our
Speaker 1: bram Stoker behind the scenes. So then Dick happens upon
Speaker 1: some other itinerant people that he knows they are planning
Speaker 1: to rob a house. Dick refuses to get involved with
Speaker 1: this plan and tries to leave, but they are afraid
Speaker 1: he is going to blow their cover, so they force
Speaker 1: him to stay there at their camp until the job
Speaker 1: is done. Inside the house, a young girl is sad
Speaker 1: that one of her newly bought stockings has gone missing.
Speaker 1: She needed to hang to by the fire, one for
Speaker 1: Santa and one from Monsieur Bombay. Who she describes as
Speaker 1: a witch gentleman who will give you a Christmas payment
Speaker 1: for all the words you've said good or ill. I
Speaker 1: think I like Monsieur Pombay very much, Yes, um I.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, Monsieur Pombay is not an
Speaker 1: actual piece of Cajun folklore, but is someone made up
Speaker 1: for this story, at least based on what I was
Speaker 1: able to track down. So just then she is expressing
Speaker 1: her sadness about all this, there is a crash and
Speaker 1: it is her missing stocking with a rock stuffed down
Speaker 1: in the toe, and the rock has a note of
Speaker 1: warning wrapped around it written by Whistling Dick, and then
Speaker 1: hurled through the window from out in the field. The
Speaker 1: would be thieves are arrested and Whistling Dick is thanked
Speaker 1: with a hot Christmas Eve meal and a night in
Speaker 1: a warm bed, before slipping out the window the next morning,
Speaker 1: just in time to hop on the next train in
Speaker 1: a chaparral Christmas gift, which is the grittiest of these stories.
Speaker 1: Rosie McMullen had courted two men, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy.
Speaker 1: She chose Madison and they married on Christmas Day, but
Speaker 1: Johnny showed up at the wedding and tried to shoot
Speaker 1: up the place, yelling a number of threats, including quote,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a Christmas present. Years later, Johnny mccroy
Speaker 1: has become known as the Freeo Kid, and he is
Speaker 1: the region's most feared outlaw. It is Christmas time and
Speaker 1: Rosita is worried, as she is every year, that he
Speaker 1: is coming for revenge, but everything goes okay. Her husband
Speaker 1: surprises her dressed up as Santa. The next morning, everyone
Speaker 1: learned that a local sheep herder shot the free O
Speaker 1: Kid dead in the night, and that at the time
Speaker 1: he was running through the field dressed as Santa Christmas
Speaker 1: by Injunction is about a prospector named Cherokee. There's really
Speaker 1: nothing in the story to indicate whether he is indigenous
Speaker 1: or whether that is just his name or his nickname.
Speaker 1: Cherokee had struck gold near the mining town of Yellowhammer.
Speaker 1: When that pocket was mined out, he moved north and
Speaker 1: he struck a vein so rich that he was able
Speaker 1: to buy toys for all of the children of yellow
Speaker 1: Hammer for Christmas, except there aren't any children in yellow Hammer.
Speaker 1: After hearing about this play him, Yellowhammer's residents go all
Speaker 1: over the surrounding area trying to find some kids. Of course,
Speaker 1: parents are not really inclined to send their kids away
Speaker 1: with strange miners for Christmas, so the townspeople wind up
Speaker 1: with just Bobby, a cigarette smoking, skeptical ten year old
Speaker 1: from Granite Junction whose mother seems flat out exhausted. Cherokee
Speaker 1: gets to yellow Hammer with all these presents and is
Speaker 1: disappointed to find only this one sullen boy, and also
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassed that it hadn't occurred to him that
Speaker 1: the town did not have any children. But during his
Speaker 1: conversation with Bobby, it becomes clear that Cherokee, by surprise
Speaker 1: to everyone involved, is Bobby's father. The story ends with
Speaker 1: the two of them riding off together, with Cherokee saying, quote,
Speaker 1: half past nine, we'll hit the junction plumb on time
Speaker 1: with Christmas day? Are you cold? Sit closer? Son? And then,
Speaker 1: of course there is the most famous the Gift of
Speaker 1: the Magi. Della has only a dollar and eighty seven
Speaker 1: cents to buy her husband Jim at Christmas present, so
Speaker 1: she decides to sell her most prized possession, her beautiful
Speaker 1: long hair, and this earns her enough money to buy
Speaker 1: a simple but elegant chain to go a Jim's prized possession,
Speaker 1: a gold watch that has been passed down through his family.
Speaker 1: When she opens her gift from him, it is a
Speaker 1: set of jeweled hair combs, which she had been admiring
Speaker 1: in a shop window for so long but just couldn't afford.
Speaker 1: Jim got the money to buy the combs, of course,
Speaker 1: by selling his gold watch. Oh Henry ends this story
Speaker 1: this way. Quote The Magi, as you know, were wise men,
Speaker 1: wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the newborn christ child.
Speaker 1: They were the first to give Christmas gifts. Being wise,
Speaker 1: their gifts were doubtless wise ones. And here I've told
Speaker 1: you the story of two children who were not wise.
Speaker 1: Each sold the most valuable thing he owned in order
Speaker 1: to buy a gift for the other. But let me
Speaker 1: speak a last word to the wise of these days.
Speaker 1: Of all who give gifts, these two were the most
Speaker 1: wise of all who give and receive gifts, such as
Speaker 1: they are the most wise everywhere. They are the wise ones.
Speaker 1: They are the Magi, that is, Oh Henry, do you
Speaker 1: also have a little bit of listener mail, hi do?
Speaker 1: This is from Vaughn. This is about quite a quite
Speaker 1: an older episode. Vaughn says, Hi, Tracy and Holly. First,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for being an amazing resource
Speaker 1: for those history lovers like myself. Your podcast has been
Speaker 1: a lifesaver, not only during the last eight months, but
Speaker 1: during the many years before, on commutes, workouts, and the
Speaker 1: regular three mile walk between my place and my partner's apartment.
Speaker 1: Note I got him into the podcast. I wanted to
Speaker 1: let you know that over the last few months, inspired
Speaker 1: by the podcast, I have tried to trace the travels
Speaker 1: of iban Batuta with food. After we realized travel was
Speaker 1: out of the question this year, I thought, well, there
Speaker 1: is one way to see and experience the world. So
Speaker 1: after some digging, I found several maps that seemed to
Speaker 1: trace his journey and cobbled together a list of countries
Speaker 1: or regions because as we know, the current borders are
Speaker 1: sometimes not accurate from the time of his travel. And
Speaker 1: for the last four months or so, I have made
Speaker 1: dishes from about twenty seven countries for my boyfriend and me.
Speaker 1: I even did a little game on Instagram, posting photos
Speaker 1: of the dish and where it was from, and asked
Speaker 1: people to guess what historical figures we were trying to
Speaker 1: travel with only one person figured it out. It has
Speaker 1: been a joy, though not for our waistelines. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for this inspiration slash coping mechanism. If you
Speaker 1: would like, I do have a spreadsheet with each country
Speaker 1: dish and recipe, along with notes, because even living in
Speaker 1: a pretty diverse city like San Francisco, it was hard
Speaker 1: to find everything needed and I had to improvise a
Speaker 1: few times. Lastly attached as a pick of my boyfriend
Speaker 1: and I on our first big trip together to Athens
Speaker 1: last year. It was so cool to get back and
Speaker 1: within a few months here your series on the Elgin Marvel's.
Speaker 1: Thanks again, and I hope you both are staying safe
Speaker 1: and well. Vaughn, Thank you so much, Vaughn. Um. We've
Speaker 1: gotten a lot of lovely emails lately, and I found
Speaker 1: the whole idea of making a like a food tour
Speaker 1: for yourself while also not traveling because of the ongoing pandemic.
Speaker 1: I found that to be quite lovely. Alley like, yes,
Speaker 1: please do send us all of those marvelous notes. Um Oh,
Speaker 1: and this picture of them is wonderful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: This is great. It warmed my Heart. Thank you again
Speaker 1: Vaughn for sending this note. Um It, it reminds me
Speaker 1: Holly you you recently did a whole endeavor to cook
Speaker 1: every recipe in the Star Wars Galaxy's Age cookbook, which
Speaker 1: I followed along. So delicious. So yeah, I I love
Speaker 1: a little cooking challenge anyway. So that's um yeah. When
Speaker 1: I say it's right up my alley, I mean it.
Speaker 1: So thank you again, Von. Thank you to everyone who
Speaker 1: has sent to so many lovely emails lately. If you
Speaker 1: would like to email us about this or anither podcasts
Speaker 1: were at History podcast at iHeart radio dot com. We're
Speaker 1: all over social media app Missed in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, interest in Instagram. To be honest,
Speaker 1: we haven't been great about updating any of these things lately,
Speaker 1: but they're there. You can also subscribe to our show
Speaker 1: on I heart radio app and Apple podcasts and anywhere
Speaker 1: else to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.