O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 by Various
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Various >> O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920
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27 O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES 1920
Chosen by the Society of Arts and Sciences
With an Introduction by Blanche Colton Williams
Author of "A Handbook on Story Writing,"
"Our Short Story Writers," Etc.
Associate Professor of English, Hunter College
of the City of New York.
Instructor in Story Writing, Columbia University
(Extension Teaching and Summer Session).
CONTENTS
EACH IN HIS GENERATION. By Maxwell Struthers Burt
"CONTACT!" By Frances Noyes Hart
THE CAMEL'S BACK. By F. Scott Fitzgerald
BREAK-NECK HILL. By Esther Forbes
BLACK ART AND AMBROSE. By Guy Gilpatric
THE JUDGMENT OF VULCAN. By Lee Foster Hartman
THE ARGOSIES. By Alexander Hull
ALMA MATER. By O. F. Lewis
SLOW POISON. By Alice Duer Miller
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW. By William Dudley Pelley
A MATTER OF LOYALTY. By Lawrence Perry
PROFESSOR TODD'S USED CAR. By L.H. Robbins
THE THING THEY LOVED. By "Marice Rutledge"
BUTTERFLIES. By "Rose Sidney"
NO FLOWERS. By Gordon Arthur Smith
FOOTFALLS. By Wilbur Daniel Steele
THE LAST ROOM OF ALL. By Stephen French Whitman
INTRODUCTION
O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES 1919, in its introduction,
rendered a brief account of the origin of this monument to O.
Henry's genius. Founded in 1918 by the Society of Arts and Sciences,
through the initiative of Managing Director John F. Tucker, it took
the form of two annual prizes of $500 and $250 for, respectively,
the best and second-best stories written by Americans and published
in America.
The Committee of Award sifted the periodicals of 1919 and found
thirty-two which, in their opinion, were superior specimens of
short-story art. The prize-winners, determined in the manner set
forth, were Margaret Prescott Montague's "England to America" and
Wilbur Daniel Steele's "For They Know Not What They Do." For these
stories the authors duly received the awards, on the occasion of the
O. Henry Memorial dinner which was given by the Society at the Hotel
Astor, June 2, 1920.
Since it appeared to be a fitting extension of the memorial to
incorporate in volume form the narratives chosen, they were included,
either by title or reprint, in the first book of the series of which
this is the second. Thus grouped, they are testimony to unprejudiced
selection on the part of the Committee of Award as they are evidence
of ability on the part of their authors.
The first volume has met favour from critics and from laymen. For
the recognition of tedious, if pleasant, hours necessary to a
meticulous survey of twelve months' brief fiction, the Committee of
Award are grateful, as they are indebted to the generous cooeperation
of authors and publishers, but for whom the work would have been
impossible of continuation.
The committee express thanks for the approval which affirms that
"No more fitting tribute to the genius of William Sidney Porter
(O. Henry) could possibly have been devised than that of this
'Memorial Award,'" [1] which recognizes each story as "a definite
expression of American life--as O. Henry's was," [2] which knows by
inescapable logic that a story ranking second with five judges is
superior to one ranking first with only one of these. A number of
reviewers graciously showed awareness of this fact.
[Footnote 1: _New York Times_, June 2, 1920.]
[Footnote 2: _Chicago Tribune_, Paris Edition, August 7, 1920.]
The Committee of Award for 1920 consisted of
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Ph.D., Chairman |
EDWARD J. WHEELER, Litt.D. | JUDGES
ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD |
MERLE ST. CROIX WRIGHT, D.D. |
and JOHN F. TUCKER, Managing Director of the Society,
Founder of the O. Henry Memorial.
As in preceding years the Committee held regular meetings at which
they weighed the merits of every story-candidate presented. By
January, 1921, one hundred and twenty-five remained, among which
those rated highest are as follows:[3]
Babcock, Edwina Stanton, Gargoyle (_Harper's_, Sept.)
Barrett, Richmond Brooks, The Daughter of the Bernsteins
(_Smart Set_, July).
"Belden, Jacques," The Duke's Opera (_Munsey's_, October).
Benet, Stephen Vincent, The Funeral of John Bixby (_Munsey's_, July).
Brooks, Jonathan, Bills Playable (_Collier's_, September 18).
Burt, Maxwell Struthers, A Dream or Two (_Harper's_, May);
Each in His Generation (_Scribner's_, July).
Cabell, James Branch, The Designs of Miramon (_Century_, August).
Child, Richard Washburn, A Thief Indeed (_Pictorial Review_, June).
Clausen, Carl, The Perfect Crime (_Saturday Evening Post_, Sept. 25).
Cram, Mildred, The Ember (_McCall's_, June); Odell (_Red
Book_, May); Wind (_Munsey's_, August).
Dobie, Charles Caldwell, Young China (_Ladies Home Journal_, August).
Edwards, Cleveland, Pride o' Name on Peachtree (_Live Stories_, Feb.).
Ferber, Edna, You've Got to Be Selfish (_McClure's_, April).
Fitzgerald, Scott, The Camel's Back (_Saturday Evening Post_,
Apr. 24); The Cut-Glass Bowl (_Scribner's_, May);
The Off-Shore Pirate (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 29).
Forbes, Esther, Break-Neck Hill (_Grinnell Review_, September).
Gilpatric, Guy, Black Art and Ambrose (_Collier's_, August 21).
Hartman, Lee Foster, The Judgment of Vulcan (_Harper's_, March).
Hergesheimer, Joseph, "Read Them and Weep" (_Century_, January).
Hooker, Brian, Branwen (_Romance_, June).
Hull, Alexander, The Argosies (_Scribner's_, September).
Hume, Wilkie, The Metamorphosis of High Yaller
(_Live Stories_, June).
Kabler, Hugh, Fools First (_Saturday Evening Post_, November 20).
Kerr, Sophie, Divine Waste (_Woman's Home Companion_, May).
La Motte, Widows and Orphans (_Century_, September).
Lewis, O. F., Alma Mater (_Red Book_, June). Sparks That Flash
in the Night (_Red Book_, October).
Marquis, Don Kale (_Everybody's_, September); Death and Old Man
Murtrie (_New Republic_, February 4).
Marshall, Edison, Brother Bill the Elk (_Blue Book_, May).
Means, E. K., The Ten-Share Horse (_Munsey's_, May).
Miller, Alice Duer, Slow Poison (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 12).
Montague, Margaret Prescott, Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge (_Atlantic
Monthly_, June).
[4]Mumford, Ethel Watts, A Look of the Copperleys (_Ladies Home
Journal_, April); Red Gulls (_Pictorial Review_, October).
Newell, Maude Woodruff, Salvage (_Green Book_, July).
Noyes, Frances Newbold, "Contact!" [5] (_Pictorial Review_, December).
Pelley, William Dudley, The Face in the Window (_Red Book_, May);
The Show-Down (_Red Book_, June).
Perry, Lawrence, The Real Game (_Everybody's_, July). A Matter of
Loyalty (_Red Book_, July); The Lothario of the Seabird
(_Ladies Home Journal_, August); The Rocks of Avalon
(_Red Book_, December).
Post, Melville Davisson, The House by the Loch (_Hearst's_, May).
Redington, Sarah, A Certain Rich Woman (_Outlook_, May 5).
Reid, M. F., Doodle Buys a Bull Pup (_Everybody's_, August).
Richardson, Norval, The Bracelet (_McClure's_, July).
Robbins, L.H., "Ain't This the Darnedest World?" (_American_, May);
Professor Todd's Used Car (_Everybody's_, July).
"Rutledge, Marice," The Thing They Loved (_Century_, May).
Ryan, Kathryn White, A Man of Cone (_Munsey's_, March).
Scarborough, Dorothy, The Drought (_Century_, May).
"Sidney, Rose," Butterflies (_Pictorial Review_, September).
Smith, Gordon Arthur, No Flowers (_Harper's_, May); The Aristocrat
(_Harper's_, November).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Both Judge and Jury (_Harper's_, January);
God's Mercy (_Pictorial Review_, July); Footfalls (_Pictorial
Review_, October).
Synon, Mary, On Scarlet Wings (_Red Book_, July).
Titus, Harold, Aliens (_Ladies Home Journal_, May).
Tuckerman, Arthur, Black Magic, (_Scribner's_, August).
Welles, Harriet, According to Ruskin (_Woman's Home Companion_,
June);
Distracting Adeline (_Scribner's_, May).
Whitman, Stephen French, The Last Room of All (_Harper's_, June).
Wilkes, Allene Tupper, Toop Goes Skating (_Woman's Home Companion_,
November).
[Footnote 3: Listed alphabetically by authors.]
[Footnote 4: A member of the Committee of Award, this author
refused as a matter of course to allow consideration of her stories
for republication here or for the prizes. But the other members
insist upon their being listed, and upon mention of "Red Gulls" as
one of the best stories of 1920.]
[Footnote 5: Reprinted as by Frances Noyes Hart.]
From this list were selected seventeen stories which, in the
judgment of the Committee, rank highest and which, therefore, are
reprinted in this volume.
Since, as will be recalled from the conditions of the award, only
American authors were considered, certain familiar foreign names are
conspicuously absent. Achmed Abdullah, Stacy Aumonier, F. Britten
Austin, Phyllis Bottome, Thomas Burke, Coningsby Dawson, Mrs. Henry
Dudeney, Lord Dunsany, John Galsworthy, Perceval Gibbon, Blasco
Ibanez, Maurice Level, A. Neil Lyons, Seumas MacManus, Leonard Merrick,
Maria Moravsky, Alfred Noyes, May Sinclair and Hugh Walpole all
illustrate recovery from the world war. But with their stories the
Committee had nothing to do. The Committee cannot forbear mention,
however, of "Under the Tulips" (_Detective Stories_, February 10),
one of the two best horror specimens of the year. It is by an
Englishwoman, May Edginton.
Half a dozen names from the foreign list just given are synonymous
with the best fiction of the period. Yet the short story as
practised in its native home continues to excel the short story
written in other lands. The English, the Russian, the French, it is
being contended in certain quarters, write better literature. They
do not, therefore, write better stories. If literature is of a
magnificent depth and intricate subtlety in a measure proportionate
to its reflection of the vast complexity of a nation that has
existed as such for centuries, conceivably it will be facile and
clever in a measure proportionate to its reflection of the spirit of
the commonwealth which in a few hundred years has acquired a place
with age-old empires.
The American short-story is "simple, economical, and brilliantly
effective," H.L. Mencken admits.[6] "Yet the same hollowness that
marks the American novel," he continues, "also marks the short story."
And of "many current makers of magazine short stories," he
asseverates, "such stuff has no imaginable relation to life as men
live it in the world." He further comments, "the native author of any
genuine force and originality is almost invariably found to be under
strong foreign influences, either English or Continental."
With due regard for the justice of this slant--that of a student of
Shaw, Ibsen, and Nietzsche--we believe that the best stories written
in America to-day reflect life, even life that is sordid and dreary
or only commonplace. In the New York _Evening Post_[7] the present
writer observed:
"A backward glance over the short stories of the preceding twelve
months discovers two facts. There are many of them, approximately
between fifteen hundred and two thousand; there are, comparatively,
few of merit."
[Footnote 6: The National Letters, in _Prejudices_, second series,
Knopf, N.Y., 1920.]
[Footnote 7: April 24, 1920.]
"You have looked from the rear platform of the limited, across the
widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago. A flourishing city,
according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of
architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving
cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a
work of art in library or townhall. You are rather glad that you
have left it behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled
through another, its counterpart.
"But there may be hope, here, of sorts. For a typical American town
represents twentieth century life and development, just as current
short stories reflect conditions. If the writer failed to represent
his age, to reflect its peculiar images, he would not serve it truly."
It is significant that these words preceded by only a few months the
publication of Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street," which illustrates in
a big and popular way the point in question. Work of satire that it
is, it cannot but hold out a solution of the problem presented: in
the sweep of the land to the Rockies lies a "dominion which will
rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile."
America is young; its writers are young. But they are reflecting the
many-coloured, multiform life of America, in journalism and in art.
Quite naturally, they profit by all that has preceded them in other
literatures. Since their work stands rooted in romanticism it may
legitimately heighten the effects and lights of everyday life.
A glance at the stories republished by the O. Henry Memorial Award
Committee for 1920 will reveal their varied nature. The _genus
Africanus_ is represented by "Black Art and Ambrose," which has a
close second in another on the list, "The Metamorphosis of High
Yaller," and a third in "The Ten-Share Horse" of E.K. Means. The
tabulation reveals a number of cosmic types--Jewish, Chinese, English,
French, Irish, Italian, American. The Chinese character is even more
ubiquitous than in 1919, but the tales wherein he figures appear to
the Committee to be the last drops in the bucket. Two exceptions
occur: "Young China," by Charles Caldwell Dobie, and "Widows and
Orphans," by Ellen La Motte. The former knows San Francisco Chinatown,
the latter is acquainted with the Oriental at home. One of the
Committee regards "The Daughter of the Bernsteins" as the best story
of Jewish character. Another sees in it a certain crudeness. Its
companions in the year were the tales of Bruno Lessing, Montague
Glass, and--in particular--a story by Leon Kelley entitled "Speeches
Ain't Business" (_Pictorial Review_, July).
But this note on the list is a digression. With regard to the
stories reprinted, "The Last Room of All" illustrates old-world
influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past,
the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival
of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is
a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a
distinct portrait of the swash-buckler hero of those times.
The young Americans in "The Camel's Back" support a critical thesis
made for their author that he is evolving an idiom. It is the idiom
of young America. If you are over thirty, read one of this prodigy's
ten-thousand word narratives and discover for the first time that
you are separated by a hopeless chasm from the infant world.
"Professor Todd's Used Car" and "Alma Mater" are two of the numerous
stories published in 1920 which take up the cudgels for the
undertrodden college professor. Incidentally, it is interesting to
read from a letter of Mr. Lewis: "The brevity--and the twist in the
plot at the end--were consciously patterned on O. Henry's methods."
Without further enumeration of the human types, it is a matter of
observation that they exist in many moods and ages as they exist in
real life. A revenant who lived one hundred years ago might pick up
this volume and secure a fairly accurate idea of society to-day. A
visitor from another country might find it a guide to national
intelligence and feeling.
A few stories appealed to the Committee for their poetry. "The
Funeral of John Bixby," by Stephen Vincent Benet, and "The Duke's
Opera," by "Jacques Belden" (the first an allegorical fantasy and
the second a poetic-romance) are at the head of this division. With
these should be included Don Marquis's "Death and Old Man Murtrie,"
for its sardonic allegory, and "The Designs of Miramon," by James
Branch Cabell, for its social satire. Individual members of the
Committee would have liked to include these--different members
preferring different ones of the four--but the Committee as a whole
saw the allegory or satire or poetry predominant over story values.
The mysterious and the tragic are found in the work of Mildred Cram
and Wilbur Daniel Steele. "Odell" and "Wind" illustrate Miss Cram's
particular genius in this direction: but "The Ember," it is voted,
ranks first of her publications. Mr. Steele's "Both Judge and Jury"
and "God's Mercy" are exotic, perhaps, but the atmosphere he creates
is beguiling in comparison with that of mere everyday. "Footfalls"
was selected out of an embarrassment of riches offered by this author.
The best horror story of the year is Rose Sidney's "Butterflies." It
is a Greek tragedy, unrelieved, to be taken or left without
palliation.
Athletics, no one will deny, constitutes a definite phase of
American life. The sport-struggle is best illustrated in the fiction
of Lawrence Perry, whether it be that of a polo match, tennis game,
or crew race. "A Matter of Loyalty" is representative of this contest,
and in the combined judgment of the Committee the highest ranking of
all Mr. Perry's stories. "Bills Playable," by Jonathan Brooks,
conceives athletics in a more humorous spirit.
Animal stories fill page upon page of 1920 magazines. Edison Marshall,
represented in the 1919 volume, by "The Elephant Remembers," has
delivered the epic of "Brother Bill the Elk." In spite of its length,
some fifteen thousand words, the Committee were mightily tempted to
request it for republication. Its Western author knows the animals in
their native lairs. "Break-Neck Hill," for which a member of the
Committee suggests the more poignant "Heart-Break Hill" as title,
expresses sympathy for the horse in a way the Committee believe
hitherto unexploited. "Aliens" received more votes as the best dog
story of the year.
Among a number of sea-tales are those by Richard Matthews Hallet,
wherein Big Captain Hat appears. The woman sea-captain is by way of
being, for the moment, a novel figure.
Anecdotal stories and very brief tales appear to have received
editorial sanction in 1920. "No Flowers" is of the former _genre_,
and whereas certain of the Committee see in the same author's
"The Aristocrat" a larger story, they agree with the majority that
the scintillance of this well-polished gem should give it setting
here.
Variety of setting and diversity of emotion the reader will find in
greater measure, perhaps, than in the first volume of this series.
"Butterflies," for example, spells unrelieved horror; "The Face in
the Window" demands sympathetic admiration for its heroine; to read
"Contact!" means to suffer the familiar Aristotelian purging of the
emotions through tears. And their locales are as widely dissimilar
as are their emotional appeals. With these, all of which are
reprinted herein, the reader will do well to compare Dorothy
Scarborough's "Drought," for the pathos of a situation brought about
by the elements of nature in Texas.
The Committee could not agree upon the first and second prize stories.
The leaders were: "Each in His Generation," "Contact!" "The Thing
They Loved," "The Last Room of All," "Slow Poison," "God's Mercy"
and "Alma Mater." No story headed more than one list. The point
system, to which resort was made, resulted in the first prize
falling to "Each in His Generation," by Maxwell Struthers Burt, and
the second to "Contact!", by Frances Newbold Noyes (now Frances
Noyes Hart).
Mr. Burt's story of Henry McCain and his nephew Adrian compresses
within legitimate story limits the antagonism between successive
generations. Each representative, bound by traditions and customs of
the particular age to which he belongs, is bound also by the chain
of inheritance. One interested in the outcome of the struggle
between the inexorable thrall of "period" and the inevitable bond of
race will find the solution of the problem satisfactory, as will the
reader who enjoys the individual situation and wishes most to find
out whether Uncle Henry left his money to Adrian or rejected that
choice for marriage with the marvellous lady of his own era.
"Contact!" is the first story by the author of "My A.E.F." and in
its every line testifies to the vital interest Miss Noyes had and
has in the boys who won the war--whether American, French or English.
So much one would know from a single rapid reading. A critic might
guess that it would have been impossible as a first story if the
author had not lived much abroad, as she has done since she was very
much of a child. At Oxford, or in the home of Gaston Paris, or
travelling around the globe, she received the foundation for the
understanding sympathy which endeared her as "Petite" to her soldier
boys. A critic might also aver that the steady moving forward of the
action, joined to the backward progress, yet both done so surely,
could not have been achieved without years of training. And in this
respect the narrative is little short of being a _tour de force_. But,
as a matter of fact. Miss Noyes dreamed the whole thing! Her
antecedent experience proved greater than mere technique.
The Committee wish to comment upon the irregularity of the output of
fiction from month to month. May brought forth the greatest number
of good stories, as November reaped the fewest. They wish, also, to
register notice of the continued flexibility of the short story form.
"The Judgment of Vulcan," at one extreme, in some thirteen thousand
words none the less relates a short story; "Alma Mater," at the other,
accomplishes the same end in two thousand. It is a matter of record
that the Committee discovered a number of excellent examples
containing not more than two thirds this latter number, a fact that
argues against the merging of the short story and the novel. Finally,
the Committee believe the fiction of the year 1920 superior to that
of 1919.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS,
NEW YORK CITY,
March 3, 1921.
EACH IN HIS GENERATION
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From _Scribner's Magazine_
Every afternoon at four o'clock, except when the weather was very
bad--autumn, winter, and spring--old Mr. Henry McCain drove up to
the small, discreet, polished front door, in the small, discreet,
fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got
out, went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted
into the narrow but charming hall--dim turquoise-blue velvet
panelled into the walls, an etching or two: Whistler, Brangwyn--by a
trim parlour-maid. Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-maids
had opened the door for Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling
victoria change, not too quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they
had seen Mr. McCain become perhaps a trifle thinner, the colour in
his cheeks become a trifle more confined and fixed, his white hair
grow somewhat sparser, but beyond that they had seen very little
indeed, although, when they had left Mr. McCain in the drawing-room
with the announcement that Mrs. Denby would be down immediately, and
were once again seeking the back of the house, no doubt their
eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red, apexed to a questioning angle.
In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in
love and departed, but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age,
had if anything grown more faithful and exact to the moment. If he
were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that he
regretted it, that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He
was not articulate, but occasionally he expressed an idea and the
most common was that he "liked his things as he liked them";
his eggs, in other words, boiled just so long, no more--after
sixty years of inner debate on the subject he had apparently
arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs were the only kind of eggs
permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest manifestation
of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one reason why,
after a youth not altogether constant, he had become so utterly
constant where Mrs. Denby was concerned. She had a quality of
perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand of her
delicate brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her,
but it was not. It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself,
even secretly, to wonder why. Effects, fastidious and constant, were
all he demanded from life.
This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this
slow drive afterward in the park; this return by dusk to the shining
small house in the shining small street; the good-by, reticently
ardent, as if it were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return
again in the evening. Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim,
lovely, with a single gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger.
"Good-by, my dear," he would say, "you have given me the most
delightful afternoon of my life." For a moment Mrs. Denby's hand
would linger on the bowed head; then Mr. McCain would straighten up,
smile, square his shoulders in their smart, young-looking coat, and
depart to his club, or the large, softly lit house where he dwelt
alone. At dinner he would drink two glasses of champagne. Before he
drained the last sip of the second pouring he would hold the glass
up to the fire, so that the bronze coruscations at the heart of the
wine glowed like fireflies in a gold dusk. One imagined him saying
to himself: "A perfect woman! A perfect woman--God bless her!"
Saying "God bless" any one, mind you, with a distinct warming of the
heart, but a thoroughly late-Victorian disbelief in any god to bless....
At least, you thought as much.
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