William Ernest Henley - Life and Career

Life and Career

Henley was born in Gloucester and was the eldest of a family of six children, five sons and a daughter. His father, William, was a bookseller and stationer who died in 1868 and was survived by his young children and creditors. His mother, Mary Morgan, was descended from the poet and critic, Joseph Warton. From 1861–67 Henley was a pupil at the Crypt Grammar School (founded 1539).

A Commission had attempted recently to revive the school by securing the brilliant and academically distinguished T. E. Brown (1830–1897) as headmaster. Brown's appointment was relatively brief (c.1857–63) but was a "revelation" for Henley because it introduced him to a poet and "man of genius—the first I'd ever seen". This was the start of a lifelong friendship and Henley wrote an admiring obituary to Brown in the New Review (December 1897): "He was singularly kind to me at a moment when I needed kindness even more than I needed encouragement".

From the age of 12 Henley suffered from tuberculosis of the bone which resulted in the amputation of his left leg below the knee during 1868–69. According to Robert Louis Stevenson's letters, the idea for the character of Long John Silver was inspired by his real-life friend Henley. Stevenson's stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, described Henley as "..a great, glowing, massive-shouldered fellow with a big red beard and a crutch; jovial, astoundingly clever, and with a laugh that rolled like music; he had an unimaginable fire and vitality; he swept one off one's feet". In a letter to Henley after the publication of Treasure Island Stevenson wrote "I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver...the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you".

Frequent illness often kept him from school, although the misfortunes of his father's business may also have contributed. In 1867, Henley passed the Oxford Local Schools Examination and soon afterwards moved to London where he attempted to establish himself as a journalist. However, his work over the next eight years was interrupted by long periods in hospital because his right foot was also diseased. Henley contested the diagnosis that a second amputation was the only way to save his life by becoming a patient of the pioneering surgeon Joseph Lister (1827–1912) at The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. After three years in hospital (1873–75), during which he wrote and published the poems collected as In Hospital, Henley was discharged. Lister's treatment had not effected a complete cure but enabled Henley to have a relatively active life for nearly 30 years.

On 22 January 1878 he married Hannah (Anna) Johnson Boyle (1855–1925), the youngest daughter of Edward Boyle, a mechanical engineer from Edinburgh and his wife, Mary Ann née Mackie.

His literary acquaintances also resulted in his sickly young daughter, Margaret Henley (born 4 September 1888), being immortalised by J. M. Barrie in his children's classic Peter Pan. Unable to speak clearly, the young Margaret referred to her friend Barrie as her "fwendy-wendy", resulting in the use of the name Wendy, which was coined for the book. Margaret never read the book; she died on 11 February 1894 at the age of 5 and was buried at the country estate of her father's friend, Harry Cockayne Cust, in Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire.

After his recovery, Henley earned a living in publishing. In 1889 he became editor of the Scots Observer, an Edinburgh journal similar to the old Saturday Review. It was transferred to London in 1891 as the National Observer and remained under Henley's editorship until 1893. Though, as Henley confessed, the paper had almost as many writers as readers, and its fame was confined mainly to the literary class, it was a lively and influential feature of the literary life of its time. Henley had an editor's gift of discerning talent, and the "Men of the Scots Observer", as Henley affectionately and characteristically termed his band of contributors, in most instances justified his insight. Charles Whibley was friends with Henley and assisted Henley edit the Scots Observer and also the National Observer. The journal's outlook was conservative and was often sympathetic to the growing imperialism of its time, and among other services to literature it published Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads.

Henley died of tuberculosis in 1903 at the age of 53 at his home in Woking and his ashes interred in his daughter's grave in the churchyard at Cockayne Hatley in Bedfordshire.