Early photograph of Porter (O. Henry)
Preserved copy of
The Rolling Stone,exhibited in restored O. Henry House on Dolorosa St.
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William
Sydney Porter (O. Henry) had first come to Texas in 1882, the same year
that Oscar Wilde visited the city in June of that year. Porter spent most
of his Texas residence in Austin, but he made visits to San Antonio, such
as in late 1894 and 1895, at approximately the same time that Stephen Crane
was here. As in the case of Wilde, Porter was patronized by the local journalist
H. Ryder-Taylor, who convinced O. Henry that he could make his journal,
The Rolling Stone, a national success if he would bring it to San Antonio
and enter into a partnership with Ryder-Taylor (Long 74-75). Porter's dealings
with Ryder-Taylor, unfortunately, were a mistake, and O. Henry's posthumously
published collection of sketches and stories, Rolling Stones (1912), for
the most part detracted from his reputation, although the work does contain
one or two good stories, such as "A Fog in Santone" (Long 135).
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Early twentieth-century photo of Commerce Street Bridge (Institute of Texan Cultures)
Augusta Street Bridge
Johnson Street Bridge in King William Historic District, which contains one of the spires of the original Commerce Street Bridge
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While
a number of O. Henry stories and sketches feature San Antonio, "Fog"
is one of only two in the major collections that use the city as their complete setting, the other
being "The Enchanted Kiss." Of
the two San Antonio stories, "A Fog in Santone" and "The Enchanted Kiss,"
the former provides the reader a clearer insight into William Sydney Porter
as an author writing in the 1890's realistic-naturalistic mode, regardless
of the fact that he tended to sentimentalize the fallen woman theme in
a manner similar to Crane's "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets." In most other
respects the story is pessimistic, which partly explains the ten or more
rejection slips this story received before eventually being published in
The Cosmopolitan in October 1912 (Current-Garcia 36). The narrative also
ironically revisits the role of San Antonio as a refuge for tuberculosis
sufferers in the nineteenth century, for in this case the consumptive protagonist
--one Goodall of Memphis among the "three thousand invalids . . . hibernating
in the town"--opens the story in a drugstore, where he is buying morphine
tablets to end his far-gone suffering (Rolling Stones 100). After completing
his purchase, he wanders out into the late-night fog and pauses upon "a
little iron bridge, one of the score or more in the heart of the city,
under which the small tortuous river flows" (101). Noticing that the guys
of the iron bridge rattle ominously to the strain of his wracking cough,
he moves on to a nearby "glittering bar," where he encounters, among others,
"a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined and sunken face," in contrast
to Goodall himself, "a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat" (103).
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Early postcard of San Pedro Park, dating from about the time of O. Henry's "A Fog in San Tone" |
After
disposing of enough Kentucky whiskey "to floor a dozen cowboys" (104),
the two men separate, the older invalid, Hurd of Toledo, having arranged
for a carriage ride out to San Pedro Springs at 11:00 P.M. to meet "a fellow
from Noo York . . . and the Castillo sisters at Rhinegelder's Garden" (105).
Liberty Bar on E. Josephine St., formerly a German beer hall, located near San Pedro Park |
With
these depressing thoughts in mind, Young Goodall makes his way, perhaps
for one more fling before ending it all, to a German beer hall, where he
encounters a young woman, pensive and alone, waiting to ply her trade as
a prostitute. However, the nineteen-year-old Goodall, whose youthful beauty
the "terrible god Phthisis" (106) enhances before destroying, awakens a
feeling of compassion in the young woman. Her "Eve-like comeliness" and
floor-length hair remind the narrator of the Lorelei from German folklore
(107). Having long since grown weary of "Texas, tarantulas, and cowboys"
(108), the lovely Miss Rosa becomes fascinated with the intense young sufferer
from Memphis. Before long Goodall has revealed to her his thirty-six quarter
grains of morphine, more than enough to end his worries, but after spending
an hour in her company he discovers that he would prefer to keep on living.
Placing an arm around his neck and kissing him on the cheek, Rosa sends
young Goodall away, his innocence intact and his will to live so strongly
renewed that he leaves the packet of morphine grains behind. |
Henry House at former location on grounds of old Lone Star Hall of Horns |
Although
not as morbid as "A Fog in Santone," O. Henry's other San Antonio story,
"The Enchanted Kiss," does not offer a much brighter view of human nature--Hispanic
or Anglo--, it also having been written while Porter was in prison for
embezzling bank funds. The plot centers around a young man named Sam Tansey,
"a shallow youth of twenty-three, with an over-modest demeanor and scant
vocabulary" (Complete Works, 1:478). His menial position as a drugstore
clerk becomes more interesting in light of the fact Porter had held such
a position during his own youth. Tansey's shyness is complicated by his
secret adoration of Miss Katie Peek, the attractive daughter of Captain
Peek, who owns the boarding house in which Tansey and several other young
men reside. |
O. Henry House at new downtown location on Dolorosa St.
Early photo of old Ursuline Convent (DRT Library)
Two present views of Ursuline Convent (Southwest School of Art and Craft)
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Unable
to bear the frustration of his suppressed emotion and the teasing of the
other boarders, on one particular evening Tansey takes refuge in a nearby
saloon where he makes the mistake as an unexperienced drinker of consuming
"three absinthe anisettes" within a few minutes' time (479). Coming out
of the saloon more than a little confused, he spurns the direction of the
Peek boarding house and ventures down an unfamiliar street, until it comes
suddenly to an end "(as many streets do in the Spanish-built, archaic town
of Santone)" (480), the narrator parenthetically adds. Actually, Tansey
finds himself directly in front of "the convent of Santa Mercedes, with
which ancient and bulky pile he was better familiar from different coigns
of view" (480). In reality, this structure could only have been the old
Ursuline Convent, located on what is now the north side of downtown San
Antonio. Having been built for a group of French nuns from New Orleans
during the mid-nineteenth century, it had been praised by Sydney Lanier
as one of the more impressive structures in the city. But for O. Henry
the quaint old limestone building functioned simply as a kind of gothic
setting in which to fashion the remaining details of the story. At this
point Tansey, feeling the full effects of the absinthe, falls into a drunken
sleep and apparently dreams, much like Hawthorne's Goodman Brown, the subsequent
details of the plot. Predictably, his somnolent fantasy makes him the hero
of a wild scene in which he rescues Katie Peek from her own father, who
has cruelly determined to sell his own daughter, with the assistance of
an ominous Mexican dwarf. To complete the transaction, the cold-hearted
father must take his desperate daughter to the old Military Plaza and deliver
her to one Ramon Torres, the proprietor of a food stand. |
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Rear view of San Fernando Cathedral from east side of Military Plaza |
It is the Military Plaza where the gothic elements of Tansey's fantasy
become even more bizarre when the reader learns that Ramon Torres is exactly
403 years old, had come to Mexico with Cortes in 1519 [sic] at the age
of twenty-three, had come to "thees country" in 1715, had seen the Alamo
"reduced," and has maintained his longevity, as he explains to Tansey,
by devouring "the flesh young and tender. That ees the secret. Everee month
you must eat it, having care to do so before the moon is full, and you
will not die any time" (485). |
Spanish Governor's Palace, located on northwest corner of Military Plaza |
Of
course, the specific young virgin to be cannibalized is none other than
Katie Peek, whose father has sold her to Torres for one thousand dollars
and whose desperate screams bring Sam Tansey to her rescue. In the ensuing
struggle, the 403-year-old Torres transforms suddenly into a screaming
mummy and conveniently dies, not because of Tansey's heroics but because
Torres' aged hag of a wife has tricked him--out of jealousy and spite--into
waiting one night too long to prepare his human chile con carne. She also
manages to plunge a dagger into the back of the astonished Tansey, whose
next sensation is to wake up on the same limestone steps in front of the
"sleeping convent" of Santa Mercedes (Ursuline Academy/Southwest School of Art and Craft
), where he had earlier reclined to rest--and to dream. |
O. Henry House at new location on Dolorosa St. |
This
preposterous combination of Mexican folklore and romantic gothicism ends
rather mundanely and, to no one's surprise, with typical O. Henry irony.
Sam Tansey returns crestfallen to the Peek boarding house, where Katie
has been waiting for him, though she accuses him of waking her up in the
middle of the night. Turning the valve of the oil lamp the wrong way accidentally
on purpose, Katie coyly plunges them into darkness and coaxes Tansey up
the stairway to her room by the light of a match which he has managed to
strike. While the story seems to end happily enough with his beloved Katie
in his arms, Tansey considers himself an unhappy and "recreant follower
of Destiny," an anti-hero manipulated by a "maid with unkissed, curling,
contemptuous lips" (487), in contrast to the gallant scapegoat hero he
had drunkenly fantasized himself to be, unselfishly sacrificing himself
to rescue the heroine of his dreams. |
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