O. Henry At Pete’s Tavern: The Gift of the Magi

Writers write in odd places. One of my hobbies is to visit authors’ homes and seek out the spots where great books were written. I’ve seen Charles Dickens’ cluttered desk in his cozy upstairs study, and the dining-room table where Robert Frost wrote Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening on a hot June afternoon. I’ve looked out the narrow window that Herman Melville gazed through as he wrote Moby Dick. I’ve checked out Emily Dickinson’s serene bedroom retreat, and the cramped alcove where Louise May Alcott scribbled Little Women. It’s so fascinating to be in the exact spot where famous words were written, where beloved characters came to life.

However, I wasn’t on a pilgrimage to a famous author’s sanctum on a short jaunt to New York City. I was ambling around the East Side, around Gramercy Park, and I just happened to bump into a place called Pete’s Taven. It claims to be the oldest restaurant in continual use in New York City, selling “groceries and grog” since 1864. It even kept operating during Prohibition, under cover as a florist’s shop, peddling flowers out of the front room and drinks out the back door.

Photos of the rich and famous crowd the walls: movie stars, politicians, celebrities. But I think the most remarkable person that hung out at Pete’s was a man named William Sydney Porter. He used to sit at his favorite booth, knocking back a few beers, and scribble away. In 1903, when he was hanging out at Pete’s, a mug of beer cost about a nickel. According to the plaque in the tavern, it was here that he wrote the immortal story The Gift of the Magi. It was published under his pen name: O. Henry.

ONE DOLLAR AND eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

You can sit at the very table, in the very spot where O. Henry invented his delightfully frustrating ending. Spoiler alert: the two lovers each sell their most beloved possessions to buy each other the perfect gift. It’s a sweet story, truly sweet. It goes well if read with a beer and a sausage at Pete’s.

The Magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Magi.