/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/a0/79/a079970f-ca6d-441e-86a8-c735b028e687/gettyimages-3291768.jpg)
The story begins sensible before Christmas with a small sum of money: $1.87 to be exact, 60 cents of which was in pennies. For the writer O. Henry, the pittance was enough to launch his most celebrated make, a fable about poverty, love, and generousness, and also likely covered the drinks he plied himself with every bit he crafted the tale at Healy's, the neighborhood bar.
In "The Gift of the Magi," first published in 1905, two down-connected-their-luck lovebirds Della and Jim make sacrifices well beyond the price of a boozy drink to share their Christmas Day spirit with for each one other. The beloved tale tells of Della clipping off her gorgeous past-her-knees hair described in the story as, "rippling and polishing like a cascade of brown waters" for $20 to buy her valet the perfect gift: a platinum fob fob, "simple and chaste in excogitation, properly proclaiming its value by inwardness alone and non by meretricious ornament." Later on that fateful Yule Eve, Jim offers his present in kind, combs for Della's attractive locks, purchased after he sold his observe. The timeless, ironic twist, emblematic of O. Henry's oeuvre, reminds readers of the often-repeated "right meaning of Christmas Day." The sentiment is tiresome and trite, but the story's soul endures.
First publicized by the New House of York Planetary in 1905, and then to a wider interview in the 1906 collection Four Meg (named for the NYC population, it was the number of stories O. Henry, whose real name was William Sydney Porter, believed existed in his adoptive urban center), the 2,163-word masterpiece has become a holiday standardized, a slim mix of trouble and pleasure sitting on a fireplace mantel with other redemptory Yuletide perennials like A Christmas Christmas carol , It's A Wonderful Life , and "Fairytale of New York."
The mixture of sadness and sentimentality in "Endue of the Magi" befits a man whose animation was marked by repeated manlike tragedies. Doorkeeper was natural in Greensboro, North Carolina, in September 1862, the same month as the Civil War battles at Antietam and Harpers Ferryboat. His don was a large doctor and inventor whose life unraveled after his wife died of T.B. when William was only 3. His father retreated into a one-on-one world of tinkering with machinery—a perpetual-motion machine, a steamer-driven horseless rig, a gimmick for picking cotton wool—and drinking away his troubles. The diseases of alcoholism and tuberculosis would haunt Porter passim his life.
At 20, in hopes of relieving his own perpetual cough, the "family curse," Porter left North Carolina for the dry strain of Texas and livedwith a sheep herder who had Greensboro ties. William worked the ranch on the Nueces River neighbouring San Antonio for two years, on the face of it becoming a proficient broncobuster while besides learning Spanish and memorizing the lexicon. Two years later, he went to Austin where he took different jobs including cigar store clerk, pharmacist, bookkeeper and draftsperson for the DoS's General Land Post. He as wel played the guitar and sang baritone for the Hill City Quartette and met and fell smitten with 17-year-old Athol Estes, WHO he wooed by serving with her homework. They eloped and were mated two years later happening July 5, 1887. Athol gave deliver to a boy in 1888, who died hours later on birth; the shadowing yr, the dyad had a daughter, Margaret.
Katherine Anne Porter's life sentence was prevailing with sorrow, but outwardly, at least, he was seen as a good-natured anecdotist with a sharp wit, especially aft a few belts. On the ranch, he'd begun jotting down stories, principally with a Wild West theme, but not doing anything with them. In Austin, with Athol's encouragement, he upped his literary output and began submitting stories to the Detroit Free Insistence and Truth , a New York-based magazine featuring the likes of Stephen Crane. Along the mode, he took a job every bit a teller at First National Bank and 1894, borrowed $250 from the money box (with a note autographed by a couple of drinking buddies), bought a printing press and started person-publishing a weekly magazine. The Rolling Stone . Featuring stories, cartoons, and humor pieces, it found a local audience with print runs of more than 1,000. For a hot second, multiplication were good.
"The little bungalow [Potter] rented and lived in with his wife and children is instantly a museum. IT's in the middle of business district Austin's skyscrapers and looks even more modest and pleasing than it did earlier the city grew," says Laura Furman, a fiction author who served as the series editor in chief for the O. Henry Value stories from 2002-19. "The family doesn't take many authentic O. Henry possessions merely in that respect's enough in it to give you a sense of what his little-lived home life power take over been same. It's widely believed that he was his happiest in that house. The felicity of family life didn't last long for him."
The Pealing Stone never made much money or made information technology on the far side Austin, so Doorkeeper blinking it down in 1895, later telltale the New York Times that it had all the hallmarks of acquiring "mossy." He decamped to Houston to write columns for the Daily Charles William Post, but was called back to court in Capital of Texa. The Number one Nationalistic Bank, which had been carefree and informal in its lending practices, accused him of embezzling $5,000. Instead of facing the charges, Porter fled the nation, eventually landing place in Honduras, which had zero extradition treaty with the Agreed States. (IT's where atomic number 2 coined the term "banana republic," in his story "The Full admiral," which appeared in his first book, Cabbages and Kings .)
It was a short stop. Subsequently seven months, Porter returned to Texas to care for Athol who was agony from tuberculosis. She died in July 1897. (In 1916, C. Alphonso Ian Smith, a childhood friend of O. Henry's, wrote that Della was modeled on Athol.) This time, he stayed in the Lonely Star state and faced the music. In February 1898, William Sydney Porter was found guilty of embezzling $854.08 and sentenced to Little Phoeb old age in federal prison at the Ohio Punitive. Various biographers, including Smith, have long held the evidence of serious condemnable intent was flimsy and that while Porter kept haphazard records, bank mismanagement was more to infernal, and he was actually punished for releas on the lam. Katherine Anne Porter who was ne'er good with money and routinely walked the line of beingness fallen stony-broke, forever preserved his ingenuousness. From the North Carolina Story Project:
"When confronted with his crime, William would write his get-in-law and lay claim, 'I am absolutely unacquainted of wrongdoing in that bank matter…I care non much for the public opinion of the national public, but I would have a few of my friends however trust thither is good in me.' The Ohio River Penitentiary was a harsh life for prisoners, but William received partial treatment expected to his skills as a pharmacist. Allowed a higher status than the pattern captive, William was relinquished more than discharged time, and it was during these long night hours that William adoptive the pseudonym O. Henry and penned some of his best squabby stories."
The official reason keister "O. Henry" As a indite name has never been to the full established. An Inkwell of Pen Names links it to a cat from his childhood named "Henry the Prideful," a versify from a cowboy song called "Root, Hog, or Die.," piece the writer Guy Davenport, WHO wrote introductions to multiple collections believes it was a twist on "Ohio Penitentary" while also keeping his true identity unadventurous in prison—the stories O. Henry wrote doing time were sent to the wife of an incarcerated banker in New Orleans to be dispatched out to editors—but the author himself claimed it was bu easy to write and say. The pseudonym may be a mystery, but his success was not. The first story published as O. H was "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking." Appearance in McClure's clip in December 1899, it tells the tale of a "professional tramp," a fateful gift from a passing surry, and a good night's sleep late on 24-Dec.
Released later tierce years for bang-up demeanour, O. Henry stirred to Pittsburgh where Margaret, now 12, lived with her grandparents. She was never told of his being incarcerated, lone that pop was gone on byplay. (Tragically, Margaret too would die at 37 from tuberculosis, three days after getting married from her deathbed.) O. Henry didn't stay long. He headed to the middle of the publishing world, New York State City, the crowded grim cosmopolitan polyglot He fell in love with and nicknamed "Baghdad-on-the-Subway." The streetlife of Freshly York would be a major inspiration for O. Henry arsenic he penned some 380-any-odd stories piece living in the Gramercy Park area. The night life, however, would exact a bigger toll as O. Henry drank himself to an early grave at the unnumerable number of joints just like Healy's. On June 5, 1910, at the age of 47, O. H died from cirrhosis of the liver and other health complications. (Many years ulterior, his second wife from a short marriage, Sarah Lindsey Coleman, would emphatically proclaim he died from diabetes, not the bottleful.)
**********
Close away on 18th St. near Gramercy Park, just a duad blocks from the active Union Square vacation markets, Pete's Tavern welcomes tipplers with an sunshade version "The Tavern O. Henry Made Renowned." The writer lived across the street at 55 Irving Place in a first floor apartment featuring three voluminous Windows where he could watch at his second habitation across the street, which was past named Healy's Coffeehouse. (First opened in 1864, the bar would be renamed Pete's in 1922 afterward Peter Belles purchased the establishment, which today claims itself as the longest continuous tavern in New York City. During Prohibition, the flower shop in front led to the liquor in the back, likely protected from police raids by its nearby proximity to Tammany Hall.)
The hard-drinking Henry became a regular at Healy's and was aforesaid to consider it an extension of his office at the New House of York World , who hired him for $100 a calendar week for a single story. Healy's even made it into O. Henry's account 'The Forgotten Blend,' but in camouflage A "Kenealy's," perchance to keep his favorite watering hole to himself.
According to biographer David Stuart, in deep autumn 1905, a new World editor distinct Henry's salary far exceeded his output and ordered him fired. Unknown to Henry, the World still wanted him to news report until his contract expired in December. And then IT came arsenic a shock to Henry when, shortly before the World 's big Christmas special version came out on December 10, an office boy knocked on his apartment door looking a contribution. The lackey wasn't leaving without a report so O. Patrick Henry sat down and banged out "Gift of the Magi" in "two feverish hours" accordant to the attenuated plaque outside his apartment building. It fit Henry's pattern of authorship overnight, on deadline, and delivering at the sunset infinitesimal, but usually with pristine written matter that didn't require much article heavy lifting.
Along the undivided, "Gift of the Magi" encapsulates the best of what O. Henry stories carry through, a brief lived-in frail see. One that is frequently, for good, bad, or in-between, given over to an throwaway fate, sole to Be reclaimed through a combination of sentimentality and his patented surprise ending.
"O. Henry had a strong sense of form; if you scan a tarradiddle of his blinded, you'd personify able to identify it as an O. Henry story by the movement of the action, leading leading to his famous trick—the flex at the end," says Furman. "The twist is really a wringing out of the patch elements and revealing something that was there right along but the reader hadn't noticed. He was less interested in style than in getting a reaction from his reader. That performative aspect of his stories and his relationship to the reader as hearing has appeal to writers today."
Contempt the plaque on 55 Irving Place, the question of where O. William Henry scribbled down his masterwork remains an unsealed one. Folklore handed down from generations of the tap house's owners claims it was authored inside Pete's—a sacred stall includes quaternate pictures and a handwritten letter O. Henry wrote as William Sydney Porter deferring on a dinner invitation—merely at least one dissenter claims it was authored in Henry's apartment. Written in 1936, The Quiet Lodger of Irving Place is a serial of reminisces about O. Henry's time in New York City by his friend and colleague William Wash Ted Williams. In it, Williams says "Gift of the Magi" was written in the room O. Henry rented. No official documentation exists either way, just what sincerely matters is the story has become synonymous with Pete's Tavern, the Hot York City holiday season, and the wonderfully brighly festooned intersection of the two.
"Approximately of the decorations we have are over 50 years venerable, so I'd say the Christmas season has always been monumental to us here at Pete's," says general manager and tap house historian Gary Egan, WHO started practical there as a server and bartender in 1987. "Every year, five of us put up entirely the lights and decorations. We close early and go from midnight to eight in the morning for three weeks square. And at nursing home, I bring i gallons and gallons of eggnog and bring it in. Information technology's savage."
Egan means the holiday stretching, of course of instruction, non the egg nog, which is Delicious. Made with brandy, a glass runs $13, which could've probably bought a quality timepiece and a full-length wigging in O. Henry's day, only late on a Tuesday afternoon, with a wintry mix flurrying about the setting sun, before the knockabout crowds shuffled in, it wasn't hardened to atomic number 4 transported to Christmases previous and to toast the purport of Della and Jim in the reflected glow of a sea of ruddy lights.
"[O. Henry's] so much an Land character and it's too uncool an 'O. Henry' story has get on somewhat of a cliche," says Amanda Vaill, a writer and former book publishing company World Health Organization emended a 1994 ingathering of his works. "His other works deserve a bigger audience, but I also still vividly remember version Magi at age 10 in a holiday anthology and thinking, 'Oh, my gosh. OH, no . No! NO!' I was struck by the cruelness of the universe of discourse and the kindness of the characters within information technology."
Furman has a similar recollection, saying, "I bear fond memories of reading 'Gift of the Magi' as a fry and thinking hard about the misfortune of the two main characters. It bothered Pine Tree State that they both failed in their presents. That's how I saw information technology then. After, I had an perceptiveness of the story's cleverness and how tightly constructed it was—and I understood that it really didn't weigh if the presents weren't the satisfactory ones since, in O. Henry's view, their sacrifice was a sign of their love. I was more focused American Samoa a tyke on the presents than love."
Unrivaled reason the "Gift of the Magi" has had a longer time in the play up than whatever of the estimated 600 other stories O. Henry wrote over his lifetime--which were passing popular, by 1920, a decade after his death, some pentad-million copies of his books had been sold in the United States—is that its seasonal worker message and theoretical account has been paid homage for years.
The commencement unity, The Sacrifice, was a silent film manageable past D.W. Griffith in 1909. Late versions include O. Henry's Full Mansion, a 1952 quintuple of his stories laced together by on-screen narrator Saint John Steinbeck in his lone acting credit, a 1999 reanimated thumb featuring the famous Disney mice and a harmonica in Mickey's Once Upon A Yule, and a tender 2014 Greek short moving-picture show set during the area's late financial crisis. IT's besides been a staple television plot, make up it in a 1955 "Honeymooners" sequence in which Ralph Kramden pawns his beloved bowl, a 1988 "Saturday Night Live" parody lampooning a approaching chairperson impersonated away Phil Hartman and a gold-plated jewel-encrusted club door, and the one that introduced many an Lester Willis Young Gen-Xer, myself enclosed, to the O. Henry classic. In the 1978 specialised "Christmas Day Eve on Benne Street", Bert and Ernie follow the formula with a rubber duckie-for a cigar box/paper clip collection-for a soapdish patronage. (In the finish, Mr. Hooper shows upfield in the foggy roommates sleeping room, returns their original items, and tells his Muppet pals they gave him the best gift of all.)
$1.87 mightiness not buy a loving cup of holiday cheer anymore, but it remains holiday cardinal at Pete's Tap house, thanks to O. Henry's deadline chef-d'oeuvre, be it written with a stiff drink in a booth or not. The holidays are Egan's craziest time, yet, given a chance to reflect on the Della, Jim, and the wide-eyed scribe who made his tavern famous, the insanity of the harden slips away, for a moment in any event.
"'Gift of the Magi' is heartwarming, a beautiful story with a hint of sadness," he says. "Information technology's Xmas."
the theme is a story the gift of magi
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-o-henrys-gift-magi-180973840/
Posting Komentar