Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/438

 of his written style is his humor, but there are also the somberness and melancholy, as a pervading note or in clutching brevity, that seem inseparable from a deep sensitivity to Oregon. His life, for all its outward success, was inwardly unsatisfying and unhappy, as has been well described by Sterling Green in an article published in the Oregon Journal on March 31, 1935:

"His later years were mostly bitter ones. He had made much money and lost it, but what really stung was a feeling of inferiority, of having missed his opportunities to do real service with his gift, of having prostituted his talents. Without reckoning the pleasure he had brought to millions, he castigated himself for ignorance and social clumsiness. To William B. Wells, a Portland writer who understood him as well as anyone, he once complained he was always being mistaken for the groom or the coachman. Death was hastened by domestic unhappiness. His wife sued for divorce and took their children. In 1911 his father died. A year later Homer Davenport was dead at 45."

He died in New York but was brought back to Silverton for burial. In 1925 money was raised by popular subscription to erect a monument over his grave.

In 1920 Guy Stonestreet of New York issued a priced catalogue of 1539 of his drawings, which he offered for sale at prices of $3, $5 and $10, most of them at $3, and regarding which he made the following statement:

"The cartoons herein described are all original pen and ink drawings by Mr. Davenport of which only one copy was made and for which he received from $50 to $100 each. They were reproduced in the Mail & Express and New York Journal. Two specimens, one of which was entitled "He's Good Enough for Me," and the Dewey drawing entitled "Lest We Forget," have been sold for $250 and $350 each. I have purchased the entire collection from his widow and now offer them for sale at prices affixed."

His cartoons, his lectures, his birds and his horses did not fully take care of the urges that were within him, so that he also was the author of one pamphlet and six books: A booklet on pheasants, not in any of the public libraries of Oregon and not listed in the bibliographies, but referred to on December 14, 1900, in the Albany Democrat; Cartoons, 1898;