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Vladimir Borovinsky.
The sad fate of a cheerful storyteller
--------------------------------------------------------------- O. Henry.
Works.
- M.: Book Chamber, 2000.
- p. 5-12.
© Borovinsky Vladimir Savvatievich (heirs) ---------------------------------------------------------------
On September 11, 1862, an American William Sidney Porter, the future famous writer, better known to the world under the pseudonym O. Henry, was born in the village of Center Community, near the city of Greensboro, North Carolina.
His father, a native of Greensboro, was a pharmacist, and then became one of the city's doctors.
The fronts of the Civil War between the North and the South did not run through Greensboro.
The troops of the northerners and southerners still entered the city, but in 1865, after the war and no longer for fighting.
Soldiers fraternized in the streets and solemnly performed at the parades of the now allied troops.
The defeated Southerners, the residents of Greensboro, were silent, confused and depressed.
Many buried money and valuables - Bill Porter's entire childhood was spent under the sign of searching for these treasures.
The impressions of childhood were useful to him many years later, when he wrote stories about treasure hunters.
Little Bill knew almost no maternal affection: his mother, Mary Jane Porter, died of tuberculosis when the boy was three years old.
He was raised by a childless aunt, his mother's sister, and his grandmother.
His father, after the death of his wife, became bored, drank a lot, earned little.
Bill probably felt sorry for his father, but much stronger was the feeling of shame for him, annoyance at his irresponsibility.
Bill hardly remembered his mother, but everything he knew about her strengthened him in the bitter belief that if she were alive, his fate would have turned out differently.
Never directly expressed to anyone, the gnawing feeling of orphanhood accompanied William Porter for many years, largely determining his character and behavior.
Since childhood, Bill was very shy, withdrawn, easily vulnerable and compassionate.
He was always dragging all kinds of animals into the house and at one time was the owner of nine stray cats (he remained a cat person all his life).
However, his isolation did not make him unsociable, and his shyness did not make him very well behaved.
Bill Porter took a lively part in all the children's ideas and pranks.
His penchant for drawing snide caricatures of relatives, friends and acquaintances appeared very early in his life everyone who knew him in Greensboro remembers this.
At the age of twelve, Bill and his friends made a classic boyish escape from home to the ocean.
But in a nearby town, they found that there was nothing to go on there was no money - and a day later they returned home on the roof of a freight car.
In general, the life of local boys during extracurricular hours was quite free, and they mastered Greensboro and the surrounding area with inexhaustible excitement.
There were friendly battles between the two groups, endless games of Indians.
One of the innocent entertainments was a game of Ku Klux klansmen: the guys put on homemade masks and ran around the streets.
The local Negroes pretended to be madly scared.
At the age of thirteen, Bill plunged into binge reading.
But, apparently, his relatives somehow managed him.
In addition to the swallowed library of cheap novels about cowboys, pirates, bandits and detectives, in a few years he read almost all the serious books that later fed the writer's creativity.
His special love was won by the famous thick Webster's encyclopedic and explanatory dictionary, he did not part with it for many years and learned it almost by heart.
Since the end of 1878, sixteen year old Bill has been combining classes at the city high school with evening shifts at the pharmacy of his uncle, Clark Porter.
The pharmacy was located not far from the house, on one of the main streets of Greensboro.
In those years, in small American cities, the pharmacy was also a kind of club.
People came here to exchange news, talk about politics and commerce, play chess or dominoes.
You could smoke a cigar and drink whiskey.
Both were included in the assortment of pharmacy products.
The apothecary's apprentice, Bill Porter, did more than serve the customers.
In three years, he learned by heart fifteen hundred recipes from the pharmacy directory, so in 1881 he passed the exam for the title of pharmacist and received a diploma.
This diploma, knowledge of pharmacy and medicine subsequently saved his life.
Working in a pharmacy gave Bill Porter a lot as a future writer, even plots for several stories.
In this city club, he heard enough stories and saw enough local characters - all this, while unconsciously, went into the piggy bank of the writer's memory.
At that time, Bill Porter had not yet thought about writing, but he was increasingly burdened by long hours at the counter or in the workroom where medicines were prepared.
Life was boring and hopeless.
Bill was well aware of this and languished in remote Greensboro.
At the beginning of 1882, Bill Porter began to have a persistent cough, which did not promise anything good for a young man with tuberculosis heredity.
It was necessary to change the climate.
James Hall, a local doctor who was very sympathetic to young Bill, helped.
In March 1882, the Hall couple went to Texas to visit their three sons and took Bill with them.
The dry, warm climate of Texas, a healthy life on the ranch, in the open air, should have been good for this interesting, reserved youngster.
Bill settled on the ranch of one of Dr. Hall's sons.
In those years, Texas was synonymous with risk, courage and enterprise for the whole of America.
But after several months full of exciting novelty, space and fragrant free air, Bill is again seized by a vague languor of spirit.
But after several months full of exciting novelty, space and fragrant free air, Bill is again seized by a vague longing of the spirit, perhaps homesickness.
There was nothing to think about returning to Greensboro , because everyone understood that the anemic Bill Porter had gone to Texas not only to recover, but in search of fate.
Dr. Hall's sons, like their father, treated Bill almost like a native and did not overload the weak young man with work on the ranch.
There were good books in the house Bill read them all over again.
He also found an excellent library at one of the residents of a nearby town.
In addition, he studied languages, especially Spanish, since this was the language spoken by most of the inhabitants of Texas.
Within three months of his arrival, Bill Porter was considered the first among all the inhabitants of the ranch to be an expert in all the subtleties of this language.
The Mexican cowboys spoke the local dialect, but Bill, not content with this, also learned literary Spanish.
Subsequently, this was very useful to him.
Bill Porter lived with the Hall brothers for two years.
In the spring of 1884, the brothers moved further into the prairies - there the breeding of sheep promised to be more profitable.
Bill Porter, deeply indifferent to sheep, free from any property and missing civilization, took advantage of these changes to move to Austin , the capital of Texas, where at that time there were already 10,000 residents.
Compared to the quiet little Greensboro, Austin was a real center of social life, in which twenty two year old Bill Porter, a bachelor of pleasant appearance, took the most lively part, although his social position remained very modest.
He settled with his fellow countrymen from Greensboro, worked in a pharmacy, then for two years as a clerk in a real estate firm.
A modest salary of one hundred dollars a month was quite enough for a modest bachelor life.
On March 2, 1885, Bill met the charming Ethol Estes, seventeen years old.
Among her friends, she stood out for her literary abilities and even received a medal for the best essay.
She was passionately fond of books, music, singing, dancing.
Bill and Ethol fell in love with each other.
Etol's mother and stepfather were against the wedding.
They were confused not only by Bill's poverty and unsettled state, but also by the formidable heredity on both sides Ethol's father, like Bill's mother, died of tuberculosis.
But these fears did not bother the young people, and on July 1, 1887, they were secretly married.
Ethol's parents, of course, were indignant, but they soon accepted it, especially since they liked Bill Porter as a person.
And although the suddenly found son in law brought a lot of shame and grief to the life of this respectable family, he did not have more loyal and steadfast friends and defenders in the world than the Roch spouses stepfather and mother Ethol.
Having passed special training on his own, Bill Porter got a new prestigious job - a draftsman, a compiler of land surveying plans.
However, they paid modestly - the same hundred dollars a month.
For a young family, this was not enough.
And yet, the first year of the loving couple lived carefree, interesting and fun - almost until the end of pregnancy, dances, performances and picnics continued.
The death of a newborn son was the first terrible blow for a young family.
But a year later, on September 30, 1889, a girl was born, she was given the name Margaret.
From the very first days, she occupied a huge place in the life of William Porter.
Etol was seriously ill after giving birth - it was the first, not yet recognized by doctors, attack of tuberculosis, which killed her eight years later.
Etol's parents settled the young family at home, helped financially.
But this did not relieve William Porter of a sense of responsibility for the life and well being of his wife and daughter.
Diseases, dependence, lack of funds - all the difficulties of everyday life took their toll, and sharp corners gradually appeared in the character of These People - hysteria, grumpiness, suspiciousness.
As for Bill, he as everyone who knew him at different periods and under very different circumstances unanimously testifies - was organically unable to quarrel, and the scenes that Ethol often arranged only made him endure the storm in silence.
With unfailing gentleness and patience, Bill tinkered with little Margaret.
When she grew up, he began to tell her endless funny stories, read his favorite fairy tales, came up with the most exciting games that brought his father no less joy than his daughter.
Bill worked in the land administration for four years.
Then the authorities changed, as usual, brought their own people, and Bill had to make room.
It was necessary to urgently look for another, and the choice was not too great.
Friends helped William Porter to take a position as a cashier and accountant at the Austin National Bank.
This kind service turned out to be fatal for Bill.
The order in this bank was more than domestic.
Any of the directors could easily borrow the amount he needed in the absence of the cashier, leaving him a note, or even forgetting to leave it.
Porter, who does not know how to make a scandal, did not make comments to anyone, but at home he told with despair what a mess these free morals reigning in the bank were making in accounting.
He had no interest in this work at all.
It was a service for the sake of daily bread, tedious, tedious, and also fraught with trouble, although Porter did not suspect the possible scale of these troubles.
During these years, Bill's desire to devote himself seriously to literary and journalistic work grew stronger and stronger.
In this he was warmly supported by Ethol, who firmly believed in her husband's talent.
mu even managed to publish for a year, from April 1894 to April 1895, his own humorous weekly newspaper called "Rolling Stone".
Almost all eight pages of the weekly were filled with texts and drawings by the editor himself William Porter.
The first experiment was unsuccessful.
The inexperienced, naive editor could not stand the political intrigues and financial difficulties and was forced to close the newspaper.
He also left the bank.
I needed a job again, and my friends helped me again.
Porter was invited to the large Texas city of Houston to the major newspaper "Houston Post" ("Houston Post") as an editor of the humor department.
Porter moved to Houston with his wife and daughter.
Life seemed to be getting better.
But then trouble crept up.
The audit of the Austin Bank found a large shortage, which is not surprising in the local order.
They quickly found the last one.
Former cashier and accountant William Porter was accused of embezzling almost $ 5,000.
On February 14, 1896, he was arrested and released on bail.
In the first days of July, the accused was summoned to court.
On July 6, 1896, Porter left Houston, ostensibly for Austin.
But he wasnot going to court.
He got off at an intermediate station and took a train to New Orleans.
After a while, he ended up in Honduras.
It was an elaborate plan.
Porter was not sure about the fair trial and the acquittal of the Austin court.
That's why I decided to take refuge in Honduras, which in those years was not bound to the United States by a treaty on the extradition of fugitive criminals.
And the statute of limitations for embezzlement was only three years.
Ethol approved of her husband's plan and gave him her gold watch to sell.
Life in Honduras gave Porter a lot of impressions for future stories and especially for the book "Kings and Cabbage".
But Porter did not manage to sit out in Honduras.
Through friends, he secretly corresponded with his family.
He soon realized that Ethol's health had deteriorated dramatically.
His love for his dying wife overcame his fear of justice, and on January 23, 1897, Porter returned to Austin.
His family met him with sincere joy and without reproaches.
For Etol, the return of her husband was such happiness that even her tuberculosis seemed to have receded.
In fact, it was a feverish rise of the last mental and physical strength characteristic of such a disease and such a nature.
The authorities treated Porter leniently, of course, within the limits allowed by law.
He was released until the trial, which was to take place only a year later.
The spring and early summer of 1897 passed quietly and intently.
Ethol was clearly living out her last days.
Bill did not leave his wife for an hour, took care of her with skillful and tender care, studied with Margaret and hardly appeared in public.
But every day he and Ethol took long country walks in the Roche family carriage , a two seater convertible.
When Etol was completely weakened, she could hardly move, her husband carried her into the stroller in his arms, but the trips continued almost to the very end, which came on July 25, six months after Porter's return.
The death of her mother shocked Margaret, caused bouts of violent, indomitable despair.
In the early days, Porter drove her around the Austin neighborhood for hours in the same stroller, and only late at night, when the girl was exhausted, fell asleep, carefully carried her into the house.
For the Roches, he remained as close as ever, and they defended his name and helped him with the same unconditional devotion, although it was clear to everyone that this experience played a role in his early death.
And the time of the trial was inexorably approaching.
The trial of William Sidney Porter began in mid February 1898 in Austin and lasted for three days.
On the third day, February 17, Porter was imprisoned in a local prison awaiting sentencing.
The jury returned a verdict of "guilty".
Was Porter really guilty of embezzlement?
No, and once again no!
But this was proved by a special investigation only in 1959.
Most experts believe that if Porter had appeared at the first trial, he would have been acquitted.
Now the jury reasoned simply: if he ran away, then he was guilty.
The judge could only assign Porter a minimum sentence of five years in prison.
On April 25, 1898, Porter was incarcerated in a penal colony in Columbus, Ohio.
Here he was saved by his long standing profession of a pharmacist and a diploma of a pharmacist.
The prison hospital needed a night pharmacist, and this position went to him.
The position was enviable - the pharmacist lived right there, in the hospital, ate separately from the prisoners, and quite decently.
He was not suffocating in a double cell without windows, like the others.
I did not know hard labor.
An exemplary prisoner and a qualified worker, he has never experienced a punishment cell, much less other punishments.
He was not beaten unconscious every other day, like mighty Indian Joe - to see if he would last two years like this.
In short, in everything that concerned the physical hardships of prison, Porter was very lucky.
But this was not the main success.
The main thing is that night shifts at the pharmacy gave him the opportunity to write.
In fact, he had never had such conditions for serious literary work before.
And it was necessary to work!
He had a powerful incentive.
His daughter Margaret lived with her grandparents.
The fate of her father was hidden from her.
He wrote letters to her, from which she could understand that he was away on business.
He could not see her , so at least he tried not to disturb her peace, not to arouse suspicion.
So, we must fulfill our duty - to give her gifts for Christmas, for her birthday.
But there is no money.
We need to earn money.
And the prisoner William Porter began to write stories and send them to the editorial offices of magazines.
But hardly any editorial office would print a criminal sitting in prison.
And Porter sends the stories to the sister of another prisoner in New Orleans, and she sends them to the editorial office.
Porter could not perform under his own name.
We need to come up with a name.
Working as a pharmacist on the outside and in prison, Porter constantly used a desktop pharmaceutical reference book, the author of which was the Frenchman Etienne Ossian Henry.
Even a young apothecary's apprentice, when meeting girls, liked to call himself by the name of Henry.
Or maybe now he remembered the cowboy song: "My beloved returned at twelve o'clock.
-- Tell me, oh, Henry, what is the verdict? "
So the writer O. Henry appeared.
The first story of O. Henry, "Dick the Whistler's Christmas Stocking", was published in a popular magazine in 1899.
The fee went to a gift from Margaret.
For good behavior, Porter's sentence was reduced, and on July 24, 1901, after serving three years and three months, he was released with a burning desire to forget his past, even to forget his name.
Now he is only O. Henry.
He has never even been photographed for print.
While still in prison, he once received a letter from one of his editors.
He persistently invited O. Henry to settle in New York and write for his magazine.
And in 1902, O. Henry came to New York, settled in a modest hotel and began to work.
He is forty years old.
In a short time, his name became widely known, his stories were read all over the country.
Publishers vied with each other to offer O. Henry lucrative contracts.
The fees were growing.
O. Henry is gradually being freed from the yoke of poverty.
He can even afford the luxury of a delicious meal in a restaurant and give the doorman ten dollars "for a tip".
But the past reminded me of itself.
One day, an old acquaintance from Austin, the widow of a ruined farmer from the South, found him.
She knew that the famous writer O. Henry was called quite differently.
And she demanded to pay her $ 150 each month for keeping silent about his prison past.
And the good O. Henry paid, and even considered her a good person who simply has nothing to live on.
But the past also confirmed the beautiful truth: love and loyalty exist not only in the stories of the writer O. Henry or in novels.
Even a young apprentice pharmacist courted a young girl named Sally Coleman, serenaded under her window.
And Sally fell in love with the young man.
The young man went to Texas to improve his health and gradually forgot Sally, and she did not forget him.
She didnot get married, she waited and hoped.
And I waited!
In 1905, Sally wrote to the fashion writer O. Henry and directly asked if this was the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter from Greensboro.
This idea was suggested to her by the details of one of the writer's stories.
O. Henry replied: "Yes!"
They began to correspond, saw each other and in 1907 Sally became Mrs. Porter.
She became friends with his daughter Margaret.
But the writer's health was undermined, he could no longer work with the same energy.
O. Henry spent the last months of his life alone in a New York hotel room.
He had a deep mental depression.
He hardly left the room, ate little, but drank a lot.
It was a slow suicide.
His weakened lungs could not stand the slightest cold, and on June 5, 1910, O. Henry died in a New York hospital from acute pneumonia, before he reached the age of 48.
Sally buried her husband in the town of Asheville, where he lived shortly before his death and which was so similar to the city of their youth Greensboro.
Keeping the secret of his past, O. Henry led a closed lifestyle in New York, almost never met anyone.
Several writers who came to say goodbye to him were never able to get to know him during his lifetime.
An attentive reader, following the example of Sally Coleman, will find many of the events of O. Henry's turbulent life in his stories.
As Bulat Okudzhava sang: "And I pulled a thread out of my own fate."
For a long time it was believed that O. Henry began his serious literary activity in prison and continued after leaving prison.
But it turned out that this was not the case.
Florence Stratton, a passionate admirer and collector of O. Henry's work, learned from his biography that he worked for almost a year in Houston as an editor of a local newspaper, while still being William Porter.
She wanted to check it out I wonder if there are any unknown stories signed by O. Henry or W. Porter in this newspaper.
Already in the early twenties of the XX century, 12 years after the writer's death, she came to Houston and carefully studied the old files of the Houston Post newspaper.
She discovered that in the period between October 1895 and June 1896, in the sections "City Stories", "Postscripts and Sketches", "A few More Postscripts", several dozen short humorisms in the style of O. Henry were printed without a signature or under funny pseudonyms.
After studying them carefully, Florence no longer doubted that it was really O. Henry.
But how to prove it?
The energetic Florence found several people in the city who worked at the newspaper in those years.
All of them unanimously confirmed that all these materials were written by William Porter.
But this evidence seemed to her insufficient.
You never know what the elderly will remember and say almost thirty years later.
Then Florence carefully studied the accounting archives.
And the accounting documents proved irrefutably that it was William Sidney Porter who received the fees for all these humors.
Even the dates of the next publications and the payment of the fee for them corresponded to each other.
Only after that, in 1923, Florence published all the humor found under the title "Postscripts".
This book ended up in Russia and fell into good hands.
The popular poet and writer A. d'aktil, the author of the text of the famous "March of Enthusiasts", he is also a great admirer of O. Henry, lovingly translated the book into Russian and almost completely published these early humoresques in 1924 also under the title "Postscriptums".
Unfortunately, they were almost never published again.
They were saved from complete oblivion in our country by another lover and collector of O. Henry's work a Muscovite Grigory Weissman.
A small book from 1924 has been preserved in his home library.
And in 1991, with the help of friends, he managed to reissue it.
But alas!
Over the past years, a dozen thick, solid collections of O. Henry's stories have been published and none of them even mentions these early humorists.
But these are not random timid experiments of a beginner.
The master of the short genre has already appeared in them.
His elegant miniatures are honed in shape, witty and unexpected, and sometimes they already amaze with the knowledge of the human heart.
In others, the grain of future famous stories is hidden.
So, the miniature "Everyone's Favorite" grew later into the story "The Magic Profile".
The sketch " Why he hesitated "contains a future"Hypothetical incident".
"She was convinced" will be transformed into... - however, we will leave it to the reader to solve further.
But the history of discoveries does not end there.
In 1935, Mary Harrell, a teacher from Austin, also a passionate fan of O. Henry, decided to write a book "O. Henry in Texas", supplement to the biography.
She also came to Houston and began studying the Houston Post newspaper.
And she saw something that Florence hadnot noticed.
In those issues of the newspaper where there were no "postscripts", stories were printed with the signature "Postman".
Mary found 28 such stories.
She had no doubt that these were also the stories of the future O. Henry.
But again - how to prove it?
It's been forty years.
No witnesses could be found.
But the largest literary critics unanimously confirmed that these are really the stories of O. Henry.
But it didnot seem enough to Mary.
And in the footsteps of Florence, she also went to the accounting archive, which was in perfect order forty years later.
And again, the accounting documents clearly showed that William Sidney Porter and no one else received money for these stories.
Only after that, Mary Harrell published the results of her research in two books, which were published in 1939.
In the second of them, she included all 28 stories she found.
This book ended up in Moscow and fell into very good hands.
The best translators Evgenia Davydovna Kalashnikova, Vera Maksimovna Toper, Maria Pavlovna Bogoslovskaya, Maria Fedorovna Lorie carefully read all 28 short stories, selected five of the best and translated them into Russian.
These translations were published in the magazine "International Literature" in issue 5 for 1940.
Printed - and firmly, very firmly forgotten.
Since then, these beautiful early novels in excellent translations have never been reprinted anywhere else.
Even the translators themselves did not remember them after the difficult war years.
But each new discovery enriches our understanding of the writer.
What is it that attracts the reader so much to the stories of O. Henry?
O.
Henry's work reflects his diverse life experience.
We will find in his stories an infinite variety of human types - almost all layers of society in modern America.
His characters are a city businessman, a philistine, a shop clerk, a typist, an artist, a snake tamer, ranchers, actors, innkeepers, robbers and gold diggers, bored young people from high society and homeless tramps spending the night on a bench in a city park.
In his stories - and the hustle and bustle of the North American capital, and the expanses of Texas, and the customs of the South American republics.
The author is able to detect funny and unexpected sides in every phenomenon and in the clash of human characters.
The stories of O. Henry are so fascinating because they are often based on some funny misunderstanding or delusion of the hero, which is explained only at the end of the story, thanks to which all the events described before appear in a completely new light.
However, not everything the author tells about is funny and fun.
So, two lovers in the story "The Gifts of the Magi" sacrifice for each other the most precious.
But this story has become a classic symbol of high nobility in love.
And the psychological study in the short story "The Pendulum" is quite disappointing.
But this is the manner of the author - even about sad things, he speaks with a cheerful smile.
But the reader understands that the world depicted by the author is not as serene as it might seem at first glance.
The hero of O. Henry is a simple man, "one of many".
For a writer, the most important thing is the inner value of a person, a kind heart, the ability to love and empathy.
Love is the most precious thing that people can give to each other.
O. Henry sought not only to make people laugh, but also to touch.
The frivolous adventurer in the story "The Green Door" is actually happy when, instead of the traditional romantic "horrors", a poor girl turns out to be behind a mysterious door, whom he can save from starvation.
The author seems to greet us with a light smile of a humorist, and saying goodbye to him, we feel the height and nobility of the human heart.
Almost all of his stories were first published by O. Henry in magazines and newspapers, Sunday supplements.
Then the author himself, and after his death, the publishers compiled thematic collections.
In total, 12 collections were released 253 short stories.
But some stories could pass by the attention of the compilers and not get into any collection.
Then they are still waiting for their researcher, their Florence or Mary, if, of course, the archives of newspapers and magazines of that time have been preserved for a hundred years.
In 1968, a Russian translation of one of these stories was published - "The Story of a Cork Leg".
This wonderful, very funny humor, which was not included in any of the collected works of O. Henry, completes our edition.
Unfortunately, not all of O. Henry's stories are equally good.
Often he had to write not by inspiration, but by order of the publisher, obeying his tastes and requirements.
Usually inspiration came already in the process of work, but not always.
Or it happened to write in an extreme hurry, when after a sleepless night, a messenger from the printing house or an artist who still had to make drawings was already standing over his soul.
And then the stories turned out to be loose, stretched, even boring.
Even in good translations.
Such stories are not included in this edition.
The inexhaustible wealth of the best stories, artistic expressiveness combined with subtle observation, the vivacity and conciseness of the narrative, inexhaustible wit, love for people this is what won O. Henry a lasting and unchanging recognition of readers.
O. Henry.
Works.
- M.: Book Chamber, 2000.
- p. 5-12.
© Borovinsky Vladimir Savvatievich (heirs)
Popularity: 54, Last modified: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:46:48 GMT
