Series Title:
This Literate River : The Writers of San Antonio
Written and narrated by Bryce Milligan
Episode No. __: O. Henry
(Camera: Pan of the S. Presa parking lot, looking desolate. Milligan walks into picture and leans against the fence.)
MILLIGAN:
I once went looking for the birthplace and boyhood home of T. S. Eliot in St. Louis . I was rather amazed to find that it had been demolished to make way for a small parking lot. There wasn’t even a plaque to commemorate the site. (Pause.) About the time Eliot was born, another American writer was just beginning to create some amazing work here in San Antonio , Texas , in a little house that stood here at 903 S. Presa Street , where there is now – a parking lot.
(Camera: Cut to photos of O. Henry)
That writer was William Sydney Porter, known to the world as O. Henry. By the end of his rather peripatetic life, he had become one of the best known American writers in the world. That certainly did not make him rich.
(Camera: Cut back to Milligan)
He worked hard, served time in prison, and he died in debt, but this is where the author of over 800 short stories began his career.
(Camera: Either a historical photo of the house, or a black & white shot of the existing house, resolving to color as we approach the door.)
Unlike Eliot’s birthplace, O. Henry’s little house survived. Like the author, this house has moved more than once, and O. Henry would have enjoyed the irony that it spent many years on the grounds of the Lone Star Brewery. He once told Witter Bynner, his editor at McClure’s Magazine, in his best Texas drawl, “Be considerable moanin’ of the bars when I’ve put to sea. I’ve patronized ‘em pretty freely.”
(Camera: Follows Milligan inside. Then pans on individual items around the room.)
O. Henry was a two-pint-a-day whiskey man, you see, an he enjoyed frequenting San Antonio ’s numerous “glittering palaces,” as he and others called them – the fancy saloons that doubled as gambling houses and, quite often, bordellos. At the time, San Antonio was supposed to have had more bordellos than any city between New Orleans and San Francisco . But he also liked holding court in the small neighborhood cantinas, and it is on the site of one his favorite cantinas that his house now sits.
(Camera: Settles on a copy of The Rolling Stone.)
This was where O. Henry edited and mostly wrote the tabloid magazine, “The Rolling Stone.” He was still Will Porter at this point, and he had been a cowboy, done some freelance journalism, worked as a draftsman for the Texas Land Office in Austin and as a bank teller, a job that eventually landed him in prison. He had even illustrated a book called “Indian Depredations in Texas ,” but he had not published any short fiction. His first story, called “Bexar Scrip No 2692,” was published in “The Rolling Stone” on March 5, 1894 . Quite possibly it was written in this house.
(Camera: continues to pan and focus on items in the office.)
“The Rolling Stone” was a real hoot, a literary and political gosssip rag that allowed O. Henry to write and publish his stories and poems, create imaginary interviews with everyone from himself to President Grover Cleveland. He draw some scandalous political cartoons and generally capture life as he saw it on the streets of San Antonio .
(Camera: Begins with the tower, then pans down into the courtyard of the Southwest Craft Center , settling on Milligan in front of the chapel door.)
O. Henry wrote six short stories set in San Antonio . One of them, “The Enchanted Kiss,” was set right here -- the old Ursuline Academy, now the Southwest School of Arts and Crafts -- or rather it was set on the steps outside.
(Camera: Walking through the corridor into the garden next to the river. Shot of the river, then pans back to Milligan, with the Ursuline buildings in the background.)
O. Henry was not the only writer to consider this particular spot “enchanted.” Some twenty years before O. Henry was here, the Southern poet Sydney Lanier wrote in 1873 about coming upon ....
(Camera: Milligan reads from a book ...the camera pans away to follow the description – the skyline of the buildings, the balconies, the plants in the garden.)
“a long white stone building ... its roof is varied with dormer-windows and sharp projections and spires and quaint clock-faces, and its rear is mysterious with lattice-covered balconies and half-hidden corners and corridors. This is the Ursuline Convent; and standing as it does on a rocky and steep (for the Texas plains) bank of the river, whose course its broken line follows, and down to which its long stern-looking wall descends, it is an edifice at once piquant and sombre . . . in the early twilight, when dreams come whispering down the current among the willow-sprays.”
(Camera: Cut to Milligan sitting on some stone steps.)
The main character in the story that O. Henry set here was named Tansey. Now Tansey was a drug store clerk who had imbibed a bit too much absinth in a fit of despair over his unrequited love, one Miss Katie Peek. In the story, he wanders to the Convent of Santa Mercedes, which was a thin cover for the Ursuline Academy . His listens to the nuns sing vespers as he sits on these steps. For the rest of the story, he never leaves the steps, although he hallucinates encounters with chili queens, an enchanted dwarf, and a 400-year-old Spanish grandee masquerading as a Alamo Plaza chili merchant, who attributes his great age to, well, let us say cannibalistic seasoning in his chili. As O. Henry described it, it was a night of “Coquetish señoritas, the music of weird Spanish minstrels, and the strange, piquant Mexican dishes. . . . the glitter of eyes, jewels, and daggers, the ring of laughter and coin.”
(Camera: Cut to the Convent Street [ Augusta St. ?] Bridge.)
Most of O. Henry’s San Antonio stories mention its numerous and admittedly quaint iron bridges. Just around the corner from the old Ursuline Convent, this bridge on Convent Street is one O. Henry would have known well. In his story, “A Higher Abdication,” he describes how a tramp named Curly is bewildered by:
(Camera: Milligan reads from book as camera pans the bridge, then looks down the river.)
“The winding doubling streets, leading nowhere . . . [and] the little river, crooked as a pot-hook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly’s nerves.”
(Camera: cut to head shot)
In another story, “A Fog in Santone,” O. Henry describes a 19-year-old suicidal tuberculosis patient named Walter Goodall. After purchasing enough morphine to do himself in, Goodall wanders out into the late-night fog and pauses upon:
(Camera: While Milligan reads from book, the camera pans back to the bridge, then cuts to pan shots of other iron bridges, ending with the Johnson Street Bridge .)
“a little iron bridge, one of a score or more in the heart of the city, under which the small tortuous river flows. . . .” But Walter is convinced by another tubercular on the bridge that evening to try another method, and the two proceed to attempt to drink themselves to death. In this we hear a sad echo of O. Henry’s own life. His beloved wife, Athol, died of tuberculosis at a young age, and O. Henry himself succumbed to his pickled liver at the age of 47 in 1910. Walter ends the evening with a good-hearted hooker who takes away his morphine and convinces him to go home and get well. The end of that story is, well, like so many of O. Henry’s endings, a subtle and very well crafted surprise.
(Camera: The montage of bridge shots end at the Johnson Street footbridge, looking up the river at downtown, the Tower Life Building being most prominent in this view. Camera turns to focus on Milligan at the end of the bridge, leaning on a pilar, reading. Cut to headshot.)
There is an interesting story told about this bridge, located in the King William historic district just south of downtown San Antonio . The old masonry bridge at Commerce Street downtown had been named in honor of Sydney Lanier, who had celebrated it in his history of San Antonio . That bridge was replaced by the first iron bridge in San Antonio in 1880, which was, in turn celebrated in the stories of O. Henry. Shortly after his death, the city council re-named the Commerce Street Bridge -- this bridge, or at least part of it -- after the famous master of the short story and had it moved here to Johnson Street in 1914. Then 63 years later, in preparation for HemisFair, the river was widened and channeled and the bridge was removed for a while.
(Camera begins to follow the lines of the bridge superstructure, ending by focusing on a young man or woman leaning against one of the spires, reading a book.)
The Conservation Society was adamant that the bridge be restored, but unfortunately a salvage crew succeeded in demolishing all of it except for – according to the newspaper accounts – either one, or two, or possibly three of its ornate spires. Twenty-some years later, this lovely footbridge was built in place of the missing original, and they replicated the missing spires. But after the spires were painted, no one remembered which were the originals. Now O. Henry devotees, and there are many of them who come here from all over the world, have to ponder all four spires.
(Camera: begin with headshot, then moves to historical photos, then returns to headshot.)
So how has O. Henry’s reputation fared nearly a century after his death? Dr. Alphonso Smith wrote that Washington Irving legendized the American short story, that Poe standardized it, that Hawthorne allegorized it and Bret Harte localized it, but it was O. Henry who humanized it. That’s not bad company to keep, and an epitaph that would have pleased this author. For all his bravado and brilliance, he was perhaps best loved for his kindness and generosity. Apparently flat broke for most of his life, at his death it was discovered that he had long been giving away a large part of his income to “the ragged and sad-eyed poor” whose stories he had always had a moment to listen to, and which he so often turned into literature. And it all began here, with the publication of a little tabloid paper. “Our platform” he wrote, with both a pun and a heart-felt earnesty, is simple: “We believe in treating everybody square all around.”
Thanks for watching “This Literate River.” I’m Bryce Milligan, wishing you good reading.
MORE NOTES:
O. Henry is also said to have boarded at both the Menger (prior to starting Rolling Stone) and at 105 S. Alamo. Henry Ryder Taylor actually lived in the house on S. Presa.The Rolling Stone was run out of both Austin and San Antonio . In 1924, a plaque was put on the house, which was fairly dilapidated by then:
“O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) worked here on some of his projects, Henry Ryder Taylor collaborating. De Zavala Chapter , Texas Historical and Landmarks Association, Daughters and Sons of the Heroes of Texas , 1924.”
The house was built in 1855 by John Kush. It was owned by the Kush heirs until 1959, when it was donated to the SA Conservation Society. It was restored by Fritz and Emilie Topperwein. The original address was 827 S. Presa, which was later changed to 903 S. Presa.
The Six San Antonio Stories are:
“Seats of the Haughty”
“Hygeia at the Solito”
“The Higher Abdication”
“The Missing Chord”
“The Enchanted Kiss”
“A Fog in Santone”