Review of “The Furnished Room” by O. Henry: Halloween Countdown

Plot:

In the turn of the century New York’s Lower West Side, a young man seeks to rent a room. After confirming with the prospective landlady that she rents to a lot of “theatrical people,” he asks if she has recently rented to Miss Eloise Vashner.

“[D]o you remember such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.”

The young man has been looking for her for five months.

The landlady denies this.

The young man takes the room, which has the marks of many of its former tenants. As he settles in, the strong, sweet odor of mignonette* fills the room. He cries aloud, “What, dear?” as if she called to him.

He decides that Eloise has been in that room and searches for some token of her. He runs down the hall and asks the landlady about former tenants. She recites a laundry list, none of which sounds like Eloise. When he returns to the room, the scent of mignonette has gone.

Thoughts:

I do wish to warn sensitive readers that the story deals with suicide.

The writing is nicely atmospheric. The young man is never named, but the reader knows the name of the young lady he is searching for. The landlady is quick with useless information, telling him twice that the former lodgers hung their marriage certificate on the wall. They were respectable, after all. So is she—not renting rooms to women of questionable character.

The unnamed young man doesn’t care. He’s looking for his beloved.

The rooms-to-let speak of a transient population, always coming and going. The “theatrical people” are always on the move. Just the same, the places they stay leave traces of their passing, ghosts of their actions, so to speak:

“A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall.”

Why shouldn’t the young man expect to find a trace of Eloise there?

The surprise O. Henry ending follows.

This is a sad little tale about a young man who has searched and perhaps found the woman he loves.


Bio: O. Henry (legal name: William Sidney Porter) (1862-1910) was a prolific American short story writer with some 600 short stories to his name. His stories were known for the surprise twist endings. He was born in Greensboro, NC, but settled in New York City. While he was working as a bookkeeper in a bank in Austin, some money went missing. In 1896, on the day before he was to stand trial for embezzlement, he fled to New Orleans and later to Honduras, which had no extradition treaty with the U.S.

He returned on hearing that his wife was gravely ill and was later convicted of embezzlement in 1898, despite some doubts about his guilt. He served three of the five years he was sentenced to, changed his name to O. Henry, and moved to New York City to continue his writing career.

He found success during his lifetime but drank heavily and died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was deeply in debt.

Among his most famous stories are “The Gift of the Magi” (1905) and “The Ransom of Red Chief” (1907).


This story can be read and listened to here: (14:18)


* mignonette 1) a plant, Reseda odorata, common in gardens, having racemes of small, fragrant, greenish-white flowers with prominent orange anthers 2) a grayish green resembling the color of a reseda plant.

Title: “The Furnished Room”
Author: O. Henry (legal name: William Sidney Porter) (1862-1910)
First published: New York Sunday World Magazine, August 14, 1904
Length: short story