O. Henry

I have now finished a first, and perhaps last pass, of the O. Henry stories of cabbages and kings (reference 2), as previously advertised (reference 1).

Mostly very short stories, mostly set in a fictionalised version of a small town in Honduras at the end of the 19th century. A breezy style, decorated with lots of what is now rather obscure slang. Perhaps it was at the time, perhaps that was part of the fun. He is also a little breezy in his descriptions of the locals, using language which would not do these days. While the characters from the US or from Europe are a rather rum lot, reminding me of the characters populating Conrad's stories of very roughly the same time from Malaya and what is now Indonesia, then the Dutch East Indies.

The phrase 'banana republic' is used sparingly, but there are plenty of bananas in the book, with plenty of them being rowed off the beach onto steamers waiting to take them to New Orleans and beyond. All done with a light enough touch and very little of the heavy politics of the first part of the Wikipedia entry at reference 3 makes the cut. Not like Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' at all, a book which was published at about the same time.

I also came across the word 'snickersnee', which I got from the Mikado, and might be where O. Henry got it. But not necessarily, as the word appears to date from the late eighteenth century, taken from the Dutch. A large knife, such as might be used in a knife fight, rather than the outsize, curved affair, more scimitar than knife, usually used in the Mikado.

Another new word was the 'tintype' of reference 5. It seems that enterprising chaps did this, along with photography, in tents and sheds in all kinds of unlikely places. Nothing to do, as I had at first thought, with the enamel advertising plaques of reference 6.

A pleasant enough read, but it palled a bit towards the end, despite only running to less than 200 short pages. Perhaps his proper milieu was indeed the story for the newspaper, which was, I believe, where he made the money needed to pay his considerable bar bill. According to the back of the book, one of the best paid writers of his day.

His first wife and his daughter both died of tuberculosis and he suffered from it when young. According to the back of the book again, he died of it too, while according to Wikipedia he died of drink. Perhaps both versions are true.

PS: the snap above is the start of the images offered by Bing on the search term 'snickersnee'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/12/christ-church.html.

Reference 2: Cabbages and kings - O. Henry - 1904, 1946. Penguin book No.595. 25c.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintype.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/wanderer.html.