A Magazine of Literature and Life VOL. XXXIV OCTOBER, 1911 CHRONICLE AND Tennyson's Grandson It is not in any spirit of hostility that we say that A Portentous History, by Alfred Browning Stanley Tennyson, is receiving a great deal more consideration because the author happens to be the grandson of the great laureate than because of its strict merits as a book. We have not read A Portentous History, but a critic whose judgment is usually kindly and sound describes it as "hopelessly dreary," in fact quite in tune with the title it bears. The author is the son of the great poet's second son, Lionel Tennyson. His mother was the daughter of Frederick LockerLampson. Lionel Tennyson died in 1886. Two years later his widow married the Right Honourable Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary for Ireland. The O. Henry "Life" The O. Henry Life, which was to have been published this year, is not to appear until the autumn of 1912. It is being edited by Mr. H. Peyton Steger, who was a close friend of Sidney Porter's later years. Perhaps not more than half a dozen persons realise how astonishingly varied was the career of the man who builded up in so brief a space of time a reputation as a writer of short stories that is second to only one or two in the history of American letters. There was a dark side to his career which the editor of the Life must treat in the spirit of perfect candour. To any one who knew and delighted in O. Henry's humour, who understood his spontaneity and his riotous invention it is quite superfluous to say that he is not to be judged No. 2 COMMENT by the standards that are applied to ordinary men. Mr. Porter went to New York about ten years ago. In a few years he had made for himself a conspicuous name. The facts of this last part of his life are very well known. But Mr. Steger feels that the earlier years, especially those years in North Carolina and Texas, need a more careful investigation. This Life of O. Henry is to him to a large degree a labour of love and, as he expresses it, "I want to know about any story, sketch, or letter of his still unpublished." The "Tching-Pao," the official gazette of Pekin, has just celebrated its 1,000th anniversary and claims to be the oldest newspaper in the world. Ever since its conception a copy of each edition has been carefully preserved in the archives of the Pekin palace. A love for accuracy has been the keynote of its success, and in order to bring about this state of affairs it is said that a number of journalists on its staff have paid the penalty with their lives for the responsibility of mistakes printed in its columns. Here is a letter written by Sidney Porter when he was nineteen years of age. It is interesting because any one with a sound knowledge of O. Henry's work will detect, in the boyish nonsense, a suggestion of the humour that years later was to sparkle in Cabbages and Kings, Roads of Destiny, and The l'oice of the City. KYNTOEKNEEYOUGH RANCH, Nov. 31, 1883. DEAR MRS. HALL: As I have not heard from you since the shout you gave when you set out for the station on your way home, I guess you have not received some seven or eight letters from me, and hence your silence. The mails are so unreliable that they may all have been lost. If you don't get this you had better send to Washington and get them to look over the dead letter office for the others. I have nothing to tell you of any interest, except that we all nearly froze to death last night, thermometer away below 32 degrees in the shade all night. You ought by all means to come back to Texas this winter; you would love it more and more; that same little breeze that you looked for so anxiously last summer is with us now, as cold as Callum Bros. suppose their soda water to be. My sheep are doing finely; they never were in better condition. They give me very little trouble, for I have never been able to see one of them yet. I will proceed to give you all the news about this ranch. Dick has got his new house well under way, the pet lamb is doing finely, and I take the cake for cooking mutton steak and fine gravy. The chickens are doing mighty well, the garden produces magnificent prickly pears and grass; onions are worth two for five cents, and Hr. Haynes has shot a Mexican. Please send by express to this ranch 75 cooks and 200 washerwomen, blind or wooden-legged ones preferred. The climate has a tendency to make them walk off every two or three days, which must be overcome. Ed Brockman has quit the store and I think is going to work for Lee among the cows. Wears a red sash and swears so fluently that he has been mistaken often for a member of the Texas Legislature. If you see Dr. Beall, bow to him for me, politely but distantly; he refuses to waste a line upon me. I suppose he is too much en |